An Anthology of Australian Verse

From the opening

The Editor has endeavoured to make this selection representative of the best short poems written by Australians or inspired by Australian scenery and conditions of life, -- "Australian" in this connection being used to include New Zealand. The arrangement is as nearly as possible chronological; and the appendix contains brief biographical particulars of the authors, together with notes which may be useful to readers outside Australia.

The Editor thanks Messrs. H. H. Champion, Henry Gyles Turner, E. B. Loughran, A. Brazier and Walter Murdoch (Melbourne), Mr. Sydney Jephcott (Upper Murray, Vic.), Mr. Fred. Johns (Adelaide), Mr. Thomas Cottle (Auckland), Mr. J. C. Andersen (Christchurch), Messrs. David Scott Mitchell, Alfred Lee, A. W. Jose, and J. Le Gay Brereton (Sydney), for their generous help. Mr. Douglas Sladen's anthologies, Messrs. Turner and Sutherland's "Development of Australian Literature", and `The Bulletin' have also furnished much useful information.

As the literature of a country is, in certain respects, a reflex of its character, it may be advisable to introduce this Anthology with some account of the main circumstances which have affected the production of Australian poetry.

Australia was first settled by the British a little more than a century ago, so that we are still a young community. The present population, including that of New Zealand, is a little under five millions, or about the same as that of London; it is chiefly scattered along the coast and the few permanent waterways, and a vast central region is but sparsely inhabited as yet. All climates, from tropical to frigid, are included within the continent, but the want of satisfactory watersheds renders it peculiarly liable to long droughts and sudden floods. The absence of those broad, outward signs of the changing seasons which mark the pageant of the year in the old world is probably a greater disadvantage than we are apt to suspect. Here, too, have existed hardly any of the conditions which obtained in older communities where great literature arose.

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