Luke Mivers' Harvest Swan, N. Walter (Nathaniel Walter) (1834-1884) University of Sydney Library Sydney 2000 http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/ ©Introduction Harry Heseltine; Electronic Text, University of New South Wales Press; University of Sydney Library. The texts and Images are not to be used for commercial purposes without permission Source Text: Prepared from the print edition published by University of New South Wales Press Sydney 1991 Colonial Texts Series General Editorial Committee: Harry Heseltine Paul Eggert Joy Hooton Originally published serially in the Sydney Mail, March-July, 1879. The body of the text was received from Paul Eggert at the Scholarly Editions Centre in Pagemaker5 format. These files were exported to text format and encoded manually to TEI.2 conformance by C.Cole at . Any errors resulting from the manual encoding of the text are the responsibility of . Known problem in conversion to text file from Pagemaker5 is stripping of dashes other than hyphens. Replaced manually. All quotation marks retained as data Full list of editor's emendations at the end of the text. First Published: 1879 Australian Etexts novels 1840-1879 prose fiction 8th September 2000 Creagh Cole Coordinator Final Checking and Parsing Luke Mivers' Harvest Sydney University of New South Wales Press 1991 Images N.W. Swan's Ireland [Map p.xiv] N.W. Swan's Victoria [Map p. 284] General Editorial Foreword The Colonial Texts Series provides reliable texts of nineteeth century Australian literary works which have been out of print or difficult of access throughout most of the present century. The selection of titles is deliberately slanted towards works of fiction-novels and collections of short stories—because their length has militated even more than in the case of verse against their re-publication. Such texts reveal a range of colonial artistic achievement which has largely dropped from view. The significance of the titles chosen for publication derives from their power to communicate a fuller and richer understanding of Australia's colonial culture than is otherwise available: the nature of popular taste, the incidence and importance of serial fiction, the influences on Australia's colonial writers, the milieu which sustained, tolerated or rejected them. Accordingly the Introductions outline relevant biographical, historical and critical contexts which the explanatory notes, placed after the main text, further detail; and, to the extent that manuscript and archival resources permit it to be done, a composition and production history of each text is also provided. Scholarly editions are not mere reprints. To have taken that easier and cheaper path would have been to accept as textually reliable the actions, whether intelligent and well-meaning or not, of all persons involved in producing the commercial editions of each work; and it would have been to forgo the clarifying prospects of each editor's investigation of the circumstances of the writing, production and reading of the work in its original contexts. A reliable text represents the work accurately and fully. To this end all potentially authorial forms of the text—manuscripts, proofs, serialisations and book editions, whether Australian or foreign—have been located and compared, although some works have extant only one state with authorial involvement. The form of the work which best preserves the author's practice in formal matters, particularly spelling and punctuation, is chosen as the base or copy-text. This is usually the earliest complete or published version of the work, but if necessary the copy-text is emended to represent it (and all such emendations are listed); however, in most cases the copy-text is reproduced in essentially unemended form. Authorial alterations and revisions, if any, are recorded in the apparatus at the foot of the page. Thus a literary work as presented in the Colonial Texts Series is neither mere reprint nor eclectic synthesis; it consists of the corrected text and the apparatus, which reports its alternative authorial forms. Distinctions between authorial and non-authorial variants are made when the editor has compiled a complete bibliographical record of the textual transmission. Alterations by scribes, typesetters, publishers, and others (and variant readings first occurring in posthumous editions) will not normally be printed, but a historical collation will be lodged in the Library of the Australian Defence Force Academy. Except as specified in the Introduction or Note on the Text, the punctuation, spelling and style of the copy-text have not been regularised and so might appear at first to the modern reader as unfamiliar or inconsistent; however, they reflect authorial or at least period practice. Where a serialisation provides copy-text, care is taken to indicate the manner in which the original instalments were presented. These endeavours are aimed at presenting a reliable text for a range of colonial works and at revealing the various contexts in which each work took shape and was read, thus helping to fulfil the primary aim of the Series of making a significant contribution to the understanding of the literary culture of Australia's colonial period. Acknowledgements For assistance in preparing this edition, I owe thanks to many individuals. I wish especially to record my gratitude to the following: Margaret McNally, for entering text into the Prime Computer of the University College's Computer Centre, for formatting the text, and for preparing camera-ready copy; Mary Bryden, also for entering text into the Prime Computer; Leonie Rutherford, for running the two serial versions of ‘Luke Mivers' Harvest’ through the CASE program; Nan Albinski, Patricia Barton, Sandra Burchill, Elizabeth Morrison, Alexandra Rombouts and Elaine Zinkhan, for invaluable research assistance; Loes Baker and Phillippa Wicks for proof-reading the text; and Paul Eggert, Joy Hooton, and Peter Shillingsburg, for encouragement, guidance, and vigilance in preventing me from making unnecessary mistakes. Thanks for providing specific items of information are also due to the following: Mr Max Castles, Secretary to the Ararat Cemetery Trust; Dr Bryan Gandevia, formerly of the University of New South Wales Medical School; Dr W. S. Ramson, of the Australian National Dictionary Centre; Mr T. J. Garrett, Principal of the Royal Belfast Academical Institution; Rev Walter Herron, of Monaghan; Mr P. Smyth, Managing Director, The Northern Standard Ltd., Monaghan; and the Very Rev Dr T. J. Simpson, Clerk of the Assembly, Belfast. For preparing the maps, I am most grateful to Mr Paul Ballard, of the Department of Geography and Oceanography, University College, Australian Defence Force Academy. Finally, I wish to thank the Librarians of the Mitchell and La Trobe Libraries for permission to quote from manuscripts held in their archives. General Introduction Harry Heseltine On Saturday 22 June 1878 the Sydney Mail announced a literary competition: a prize of one hundred pounds would be awarded to ‘the best original tale’ written for publication in its pages, with entries closing on 31 December 1878.1 The altruistic desire to foster local literature may well have been a genuine element in this journalistic sponsorship of such a competition, but it was almost certainly not the only one. Founded in 1860 by John Fairfax, the Sydney Mail started life as an eight-page weekly publication aimed primarily at a country readership, offering, in effect, a summary of the news which appeared from Monday to Friday in the Sydney Morning Herald. Gavin Souter, in his history of the Herald, records that the Mail ‘was issued on Friday, in time for the weekly country mail coaches. It carried no illustrations, and made no attempt at typographical display, but by the end of the year its circulation was 5000’.2 Within four years, that figure had risen to 10,000.3 In January 1870, however, the Mail was directly challenged by the Fairfaxes' principal rival, Samuel Bennett, with the inauguration of his very successful weekly, the Town and Country Journal, whose thirty-two pages sold for sixpence.4 The Journal soon became well known for its serial fiction. As RobinWalker reports, early in 1871 it serialised Henry Kingsley's The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn and later in the same year Dickens' Edwin Drood.5 From its inception it provided a regular outlet for local writers and writing. On 4 March 1871 John Fairfax and Sons sought to counter the popularity of the Journal by increasing the price and size of the Sydney Mail to match those of the Journal, and by introducing woodcut illustrations.6 As late as 1878, the Mail's search for original Australian fiction may still have represented an attempt to match one of the chief successes of its main rival. It may also have been undertaken in anticipation of the great International Exhibition to be staged in Sydney in 1879, an event calculated to focus attention on every aspect of colonial cultural achievement. In sum, the motives underlying the Mail's gesture of literary patronage were probably as mixed as in most such gestures. In any event, the winner of the competition was announced on 8 March 1879 as N. Walter Swan, of Stawell in Victoria. In the same issue of the Mail there appeared the first of the twenty instalments of his winning tale — ‘Luke Mivers' Harvest’, which was thereafter printed serially every Saturday until 19 July. Swan carried off the first prize against some sixty to seventy other entrants.7 After a preliminary assessment by an unidentified judge,8 the final selection among three short-listed manuscripts was made by William Bede Dalley.9 Then at the zenith of his reputation and influence in the literary community, Dalley placed the seal of contemporary approval on Swan by his choice of ‘Luke Mivers' Harvest’ as the winner of a competition organised by the influential Fairfax press. In the light of this success, Swan's novel must be seen as speaking for and to the prevailing literary taste of the Australian colonies in the late 1870s.