The Short Story in Australia

This chapter examines the history of the short story in Australia. Australia's tradition of short fiction writing dates back to the mid-nineteenth century. In the days when Australian novels were mainly published in England, the short story was a source of income for many authors. By the 1950s, the type of realist story favoured by Henry Lawson — using a colloquial, usually male, voice and featuring working-class characters and bush settings — had been established as the Australian tradition. The chapter first considers short stories written in the 1950s and 1960s, which reflect versions of realism and modernism, before discussing works published in the 1970s and 1980s that deal with postmodernism and feminism. It also looks at short stories published since the 1990s, such as Gail Jones' The House of Breathing, Tony Birch's Father's Day (2009), and Cate Kennedy's Like a House on Fire (2012).