The Drover's Wife

Since Henry Lawson wrote his story 'The Drover’s Wife' in 1892, Australian writers, painters, performers and photographers have created a wonderful tradition of drover's wife works, stories and images. The Russell Drysdale painting from 1945 extended the mythology and it, too, has become an Australian icon. Other versions of the Lawson story have been written by Murray Bail, Barbara Jefferis, Mandy Sayer, David Ireland, Madeleine Watts and others, up to the present, including Leah Purcell's play and Ryan O’Neill’s graphic novel. In essays and commentary, Frank Moorhouse examines our ongoing fascination with this story and has collected some of the best pieces of writing on the subject. This remarkable, gorgeous book is, he writes, 'a monument to the drovers' wives'.

Frank Moorhouse worked as an editor of small-town newspapers and as an administrator and tutor for the Workers’ Educational Association, and in the 1970s became a full-time writer. He is best known for the highly acclaimed Edith trilogy: Grand Days, Dark Palace, and Cold Light. Frank has been awarded a number of fellowships, including writer-in-residence at King's College, Cambridge, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. His work has been translated into several languages. He was made a member of the Order of Australia for services to literature in 1985, and was made a Doctor of the University by Griffith University in 1997 and a Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) by the University of Sydney in 2015.