AustLit

Reminiscence by an old pioneer of his early days in Australia on the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s, around Forest Creek/Castlemaine. The Gloucestershire immigrant with his friend falls in love with an Irish girl on the trip out; they work together prospecting to find enough gold to marry; the narrator kills a Chinese gold robber by accident, flees to Melbourne and marries his girl. Money bribes the Chinese and several years later he sees the supposed dead man in Castlemaine. Anti-Chinese sentiments very strong. Includes passing references to his wife's loyalty; woman's selfishness; and the superiority of men's friendship. (PB)

A young woman accepts an invitation to London for a month, leaving her country doctor fiancee behind. She is disquieted by the cheerfulness with which he accepts her absence and loves his work. Their separation, a scheming army captain, a trip to Switzerland convince her he cares not for her despite his loving earnest letters. She marries another but passes his funeral procession on a bridal visit to her parents. Includes passing reference to Ibsen's Doll's House. Also a tough maiden aunt. (PB)

Romantic comedy. A matchmaking visit to the city arranged by two sisters to introduce a melancholy doctor's widow to the solemn homeopathic doctor son of one of the sisters succeeds ... The two had been youthful lovers, their engagement broken by the homeopath's theoretical quarrels with his medical father-in-law-to-be. (PB)

Humorous rhyming prose of a child begging her father to come home during house-cleaning horrors. (PB)

An ocean storm and a sinking ship drag the sailors of a fishing village from their beds. One old man reluctantly leaves his dying wife - and helps save four men from the wreck. He recovers from a fever several weeks later to find his wife recovered and one of the rescued men his long-lost son returned from the goldfields. (PB)

A lawyer's account of a young wife who came to him for help to make her husband love her. (PB)

Humorous London tale of two racing tipsters who - with the help of their young office clerk - fool two indignant fathers, and avoid a whipping which they throw off on to a judge who has passed harsh judgement on them in court. (PB)

A kindly matchmaking sister introduces her brother to a pretty young lady during a country house visit - and 'by contraries' induces them to like each other. A proposal ensues ... (PB)

A man ruined by horse betting and drink goes walking in Yorkshire to recover his health. By chance he sees a secret horse-racing trial and recovers part of his fortune - £400 - on the race. (PB)

Domestic humour. A witty bachelor friend of her husband fails to impress his young wife - because he failed to appreciate their baby. (PB)

Ghost tale of an aspiring artist who completes a portrait of a lady who visits his room but once, exhibits it at the academy, sells it to a fashionable lady who swears it is her daughter drowned at sea but returned from the dead for her portrait. She pays handsomely for it and his reputation is made when the real sitter, an actress, returns for her commission. (PB)

A poor Irish emigrant bound for New York with his wife and three children is unable to part with any of them when a rich passenger offers to adopt one. Sentimental. (PB)

A card-room in a London fashionable gentleman's club introduces the narrator to another player. He goes back to the man's rooms where he is locked in and finds himself playing against a lunatic for his life. He loses and only escapes being blown up by a moth which extinguishes itself and a deathly candle at the same time. Narrow escape from a lunatic tale. (PB)

A Church of England minister is the unwitting recipient of a young maiden's protests against her sister and her mother's preparations for the visit of the new minister. He is touched - mistaken identities are cleared up - and eventually is to marry the maiden of 16 instead of her older sister. (PB)

Correspondent's letter detailing two ladies' suicides and the attempted suicide of an old man at Monte Carlo as a result of unfortunate gambling. (PB)

An old lady's death very soon after making a new will directing her jewels to be broken up and sold over the years to provide for her pauper grand-daughters, Ruby and Grace. The murder of the lawyer to whom she had just entrusted them and the theft of the jewels involves Detectives Sinclair and Jackson in an investigation in Flemington and Collins Street, Melbourne. Blackmail of the lawyer's clerk over a forged gambling cheque by the iniquitous English imposter Perceval Coverdale - who had been courting Ruby Hulton in the hope of her inheritance - lead the trail of suspicion to his door. Though uninterested because of her poverty, Perceival pretends to elope with Ruby via Adelaide to cover his true reasons for leaving Melbourne - but he dumps her at Portland where he persuades a fisherman to help him escape ... nightmares; suicide; lost jewels; ruined reputation follows. (PB)