AustLit

Account of living in the country near London - the summer visitors and winter solitude; and a burglar who returns to the same house twice in one night - a victim of perseverance! (PB)

A buffalo killed by wolves on the American prairie. (PB)

Brief account of the origin of the fish market of Havana, Cuba, in the 1830s and the pirate Marti. (PB)

A rich pretty heiress decides to test her lovers by pretending to lose her money and training to be a nurse. Only one, an artist, remains true, even after a patient throws acid at her and she loses her beauty. He leaves her, however, when he discovers that she had only feigned losing her fortune. Light. (PB)

Anecdote of a miller who used the law to force the king of Prussia to rebuild the mill he had demolished - and the king's generosity to a descendent. (PB)

Account of a woman's visions in a New York hotel in 1873 of a ghostly euchre game and murder; the repetition of the visions several years later; her publication of the story; and eventual meeting with the actual murderer - from whose wife she learnt the true story. Interesting 'realist' narrative; insists on not being a believer in ghosts and the tale's truth; unclear narrator - a woman at first. (PB)

A teacher's reminiscence of his confrontations with schoolboys - to discover the culprit of writing on the board, and to dissuade a large boy from snowballing. Strict punishments infrequently administered. (PB)

A second wife skilfully avoids her husband's wish that she should take over all the household work by proving her unsuitability for cooking etc. Light humour; separate spheres supported implicitly. (PB)

A young English girl falls in love with her cousin who is drowned when his ship sinks on the way to Australia. She is courted by and weds a rich handsome man several years later but discovers that he is insane - after which he shoots himself. Tale of life's sadness. (PB)

A beautiful scheming woman married to a weak-willed, rich Melbourne merchant prince agrees to enter a sealed room to destroy her dead father-in-law's will which would disinherit her husband in favour of his younger brother. She encounters a ghost but executes her task. The younger brother returns and proves her a murdress in California ; his brother repents and dies forgiven by brother and father's ghost; she hangs herself in gaol. (PB)

An industrious housewife learns when her husband is missing for several hours that he is worth more than spotless bedspreads etc. (PB)

An old woman remembers the love of her youth and the evening she rejected him because of family disapproval. Slight. (PB)

A christening party of shepherds and their ladies in the south of England is interrupted by three strangers, two of whom partake of the mead and food, and the third who runs away. The identities of hangman, escaping condemned man, and brother of the victim emerge only later. Set near Casterbridge. Shepherds's party and domestic scene well evolved. (PB)