Choice review

Morton (Flinders Univ., Australia) gets off to a flying start. The title of his book and its first sentence ("According to an old and bitter joke, the leading exports of Australia are wool and brains") are both humdingers. Morton holds his groove. Supported by tons of data culled from Australian Dictionary of Biography (online ed., CH, Feb'08, 45-2924), Aust Lit (CH, Sup'06, 43Sup-0126), and databases housed in libraries, he describes in vivid, arresting detail the effects of the departure from Australia of four generations of aspiring writers to "the undisputed hub of all Anglophone nations and colonies." Alas, London soon became for these migrants the hub of discontent, too. The squalor, poverty, and gloomy fish-gray skies of this "greatest, richest, most populous city on earth" were not the only drawbacks faced by the Miles Franklins and the Jack Lindsays who tried to gate-crash Fleet Street. Many sank under the burdens of freelance journalism, a much more crowded, competitive field than they had imagined. A topnotch socio-culturalist, Morton scores high as a literary critic, as he proves in his heady analysis of symbolic strategies in Christina Stead's naturalistic novel For Love Alone (1944). Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. P. Wolfe University of Missouri--St. Louis

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