AustLit

Jessica refuses an offer of marriage to nurse her paralysed mother. Five years later her mother dies and her faithful lover returns. Basic romance. (PB)

A series of thefts in a private summer boarding house at Kew, Victoria, are traced to a beautiful boarder masquerading as the niece of a family friend. The narrator, the landlady's niece, solves the mystery. Basic plot. (PB)

A wife of six months feels herself neglected when her husband spends a night with his friends and begins to receive a man she knows he does not trust. Happy ending to this weakly predictable tale. (PB)

On the difference between male and female children - soldiers vs. dolls - and how this shows their inherent natures. (PB)

Australian romance between a military captain, ugly in appearance but brave at heart, and a lovely widow begins when he saves her son from a street accident. Generalised. (PB)

Life of Miss Beecher (1800-1878) who began some of the first quality school for girls in the USA, established home missionary work, wrote religious and everyday moral pieces. (PB)

Detective tale (attempting the W. W. style) by an ex-member of the Victorian detective police force. He discovers a murder in a country hotel with the assistance of the victim's ghost ... Quickly degenerates into melodrama; dialogue especially stilted. (PB)

Domestic tale in Melbourne: a commercial traveller finds himself in charge of an abandoned baby, having offered to look after it briefly on a Williamstown train. He resolves to adopt it but his wife refuses - until she discovers their own is missing ... weak humour of the incompetent male vs. baby variety. (PB)

Anecdote from the life of Charles Bianconi in Ireland in 1836. He and a travelling companion sleep briefly above a corpse. (PB)

A country mother's love saves her son from total dissipation in New York, and after six years of silence and her husband's illness, brings him safe back from adventures in Australia. Moral tale, weak. (PB)

Jerky tale set in London of Jack, an orphaned boy adopted by a kindly woman - an Australian married to an Englishman who had disappeared without a trace. Her story of her Australian youth, her secret marriage and long years of waiting for her husband are completed by the grown-up Jack who has found her husband accidentally in Australia ... (PB)

Set in Melbourne and Macedon, a romance of misunderstanding and reconciliation. The narrator overhears the woman he loves speaking words of love to another - but eventually discovers she was reading a letter written by her cousin ... Her stocking and a washerwoman's mistake bring them together. Conventional tale with some promise. (PB)

A graduated apprentice in Boston asks for his master's permission to marry his daughter ... Biographical, exemplary anecdote. (PB)

A sea captain returns to Victoria to visit his sister and - in the disguise of his beard - teaches his brother-in-law not to gamble at cards ... Competent if predictable. (PB)

Very brief sketch of a tenor's performance in silk tights. (PB)

Conversation with a Melbourne printer after dinner explains his custom of putting a lamp in his window and providing a bed for tramps ; from his own experiences of want as a youth in the bush of Victoria ... Style unexceptional but content interesting, re: the importance of feeling, the still life, etc. (PB)

Narrative of the ill-luck which pursued this London Jewish family after they disregarded the request of a dying Jewish rabbi not to open a parcel left to them. Factual. (PB)

A giant from New Jersey USA meets little Tommy Bento from New York on a Jersey beach and takes him to his farm where food ripens on trees. Dream ending. Engaging tale slightly marred by moral about regulating what children eat. (PB)

A New York pawnbroker takes a seaside holiday to escape pursuit for a stolen diamond and falls in love with a little girl, transforming himself and saving her from drowning. Unusual, occasionally touching tale. (PB)

Cynical tale of two law clerks and the plan hatched between them to persuade a governess to a false marriage; of a similar plan hatched with the governess and the father of one of the clerks; and the denoument which leaves them both deceived. All parties to the story (apart from wealthy Anna Swift and her father who both clerks seek for her fortune) are unappealing. (PB)