There must have been a heyday, sometime between the first settlement of Australia and the second World War, during which the short story flourished here. This period is harked back to, nostalgically, by a generation slightly older than mine. One listens and feels incredulous and even perversely dubious about the great wealth of talent, now supposedly suppressed.
The more durable of these stories have been collected over and again, arranged and rearranged in anthologies for use in schools and teachers’ training colleges. Numerous collections have also been made of the work of individual authors (now deceased) and these, too, must find their readers chiefly where syllabuses, teachers, and lecturers dictate. Thousands, of ephemeral interest, have simply disappeared. There is a division between those who look on the passing of this lush period as regrettable, and those who take a tougher view and feel that stories of any merit will continue to battle their way into print somewhere in the English-speaking world.
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