Review of The Burning Library: Our Great Novelists Lost and Found, by Geordie Williamson

Abstract

Geordie Williamson's collection of short essays on Australian novels he believes deserve to be rescued from oblivion is the kind of work that should have us all cheering. We need more public discussion of our writing, and Williamson's regular book reviews for the Australian show that he can bring a wide knowledge of international writing to bear on local work. The Burning Library is a passionate engagement with Australian fiction, written in clear and direct language for the general reader, to put alongside Jane Gleeson-White's excellent Australian Classics: 50 Great Writers and Their Celebrated Works. The Burning Library is published by Text, and seems intended to accompany its series of reprinted Australian classic novels (Williamson wrote two of the introductions—for Olga Masters and Thomas Keneally—to the Text reprints).

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Published 1 November 2012 in Volume 27 No. 3-4. Subjects: Australian literary history.

Cite as: Lever, Susan. ‘Review of The Burning Library: Our Great Novelists Lost and Found, by Geordie Williamson.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 27, no. 3/4, 2012, doi: 10.20314/als.f587c7dc6d.