World of Henry Lawson. Walter Stone. 1978.

Henry Lawson was as Australian as billy tea and proud of it. He was bred during the island continent’s turbulent emergence as an identity. He idealised the gold digger, the stockman, drover and shearer. He extolled the great Australian mateship as he found it in the bush and was suspicious of city folk and wealth.

He spurned the esoteric prose and lofty poetry of his European peers for the robust ballad and the pithy short story that became the hallmark of Australian creative writing of that period.

The World of Henry Lawson contains the best of his work as selected by bibliographer Walter Stone.