AustLit

A loyal wife journeys on foot to join her husband prospecting in the Victorian ranges. He is planning to marry a rich man's daughter and murders her with his pick and buries her in the mine. Another man had met her before she joined her husband and he asks where she is as the miner is about to marry. All is revealed. (PB)

A man's chivalry in helping a woman across a puddle costs him his pocket-book but restores to him the woman he thought had married another. Colonial romance. Slight. (PB)

Showing how the Lord Mayor, once a bricklayer, outfaces the sneers of a titled guest at a city banquet. (PB)

A man breaks his engagement when his fiancee teasingly refuses to tell him who gave her the beautiful rose she wears. Smug exemplary tale to women not to annoy their lovers - for she never married though he did. (PB)

Three widows' statements of marriage, each determined to marry again. Three widowers, each determined not to. (PB)

A businessman cures his wife's gossiping by telling her he has murdered a grocer he quarrelled with - and she obligingly spreads the tale, causing his arrest. Worn humour. (PB)

An Irish soldier in Paris, formerly on the staff of Marshal MacDonald, falls in love with his new washerwoman, herself the orphan of a soldier. They marry and live happily in Ireland, Napoleon having given the bride away. Semi-historical romance. (PB)

Suggestions for bringing up a boy by thrashings and denial. Humour, irony. (PB)

German legend of a lady who forces her lover to wait until his heart turns to stone and he makes her wait until she dies. The new plant - ivy - grew out of her grave, creeping its faithful way to his castle. (PB)

Prying Mr Poke determines to discover what his inventor-neighbour is working on. The inventor takes his revenge by asking Mr Poke to be the living test of his new patent cremator. Humour. (PB)

A tall colonel explains to his shorter neighbour how he married off all eleven daughters in two years - with the persuasion of a cocked pistol. Humour. (PB)

Judge Cooley decides to outface a bulldog in order to collect a bill - but comes off a poor second. (PB)

An illiterate wife has the truest education - of the heart. Sententiously sweet. (PB)

A boy decides to steal a neighbour's melon. Inconclusive. (PB)

Advises aspiring poets to strive first to be understood and to study A. L. Gordon. (PB)

A young Melbourne lawyer falls in love with a beautiful, dashing heiress during a holiday at Sorrento but finds she is already engaged when he proposes. Five years later, now a successful man wary of women, they meet again in Melbourne and he is convinced she is not the coquette he thought. Well-written though the concluding paragraphs (about a runaway carriage) are confusing (and the themes suspect). (PB)

A bachelor's misadventures minding his sister's baby; includes the purchase of milk and an encounter with dainty Harriet Ellis. Probably US. Predictable but better than some of the genre. (PB)

Probably US; an army captain's account of his colonel's premonition of the one time he would be wounded in battle. Psychic curiosity. (PB)

Tale of English lovers in Oxfordshire in 1717 killed by lightning on the eve of their wedding - and immortalised in verse by Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Historical. (PB)

A newly-married wife's wish for a kitten is soon met by relatives' kindness - several times. Humour. (PB)