Best Australian short stories. Douglas Stewart & Beatrice Davis. 2008.

Let Australia’s greatest writers take you on a journey through time to the Australian landscape of outback living, romance and drama. This collection of over 30 of Australia’s best short stories covers a tremendous range of action and background. The stories are about people - diggers, shearers, aborigines, drovers, city dwellers. Stories about Australians from all walks of life and covering more than 100 years of history.

The early stories, with their focus on man’s struggle against a harsh environment, are by the popular writers of what has been called ‘the Bulletin tradition’ - Henry Lawson, A. B. Paterson, Hugh McCrae, Norman Lindsay, Frank Dalby Davison.

In later years, the predominantly masculine problems of life in the bush give way to the more complex social problems of urban life. Stories by Alan Marshall, Judith Wright and others, deal tellingly with the perplexities, agonies and comedies of people simply living amongst people.