Too Far Everywhere: The Romantic Heroine in Nineteenth Century Women Writers by Fiona Giles

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor edgewear.

This is the first full-length study to focus exclusively and sympathetically on romance novels written by Australian women writers in the nineteenth century.

In looking at novels by Catherine Helen Spence. Caroline Leakey, Catherine Martin, Ada Cambridge, Tasma and Rosa Praed, Giles combines biographical and theoretical reading with close textual analysis.

She argues that far from being formula pulp for languid middle-class ladies pining for their British homeland, the romance novel made use of the issues of love to contribute to debates about Australian nationality, colonialism and the relationship of the female subject to husband, family and state.

Too Far Everywhere breathes new life into these long-forgotten love stories. Their heroines' choice between an Australian bushman or an English aristocrat became a metaphor for the nation's choice between the many different types of colonial and national relationships, an issue still current today. (back cover)