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Rigby's Romance (1921) is a novel by Joseph Furphy. Written under his pseudonym "Tom Collins," Rigby's Romance is a sequel of sorts to Such is Life, a unique and challenging story that took decades to achieve a proper audience. Earning comparisons to the works of Melville and Twain, Furphy's novel is considered a landmark of Australian literature. "Just as a bale of wool is dumped, by hydraulic pressure, to less than half its normal size, I scientifically compressed something like twenty-four hours' sleep into the interval between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. Then a touch of what you call dyspepsia and I call laziness, kept me debating with myself for another swift-running hour." Between such beguiling narration and lively conversations with the characters he meets on his travels through the Australian outback, Tom Collins presents himself as a philosophizing everyman, a prototype of such characters as Joyce's Leopold Bloom and Beckett's Molloy. Journeying in search of his friend Jefferson Rigby, a gentleman and adventurer like himself, Collins reflects on their history together and longs for his company. When the two meet up, they engage in a long discussion on politics and the nature of humanity, touching on topics as strange and diverse as Australia's legendary wildlife. This edition of Joseph Furphy's Rigby's Romance is a classic work of Australian literature reimagined for modern readers.
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About the author
Joseph Furphy (1843-1912) was an Australian novelist. Born in Yering, Victoria, he was raised in a family of Irish emigrants from County Armagh. Educated by his mother, he read mostly Shakespeare and the Bible in his youth before moving to Kangaroo Ground, where a school was opened by the local parents. As a teenager, he began working on his father's farm, later marrying Leonie Germain and taking over her family plot. Forced to switch from farming to animal husbandry due to a period of financial loss, he continued his literary interests as a published poet and short story writer and later fictionalized his agricultural experience in Such is Life (1903), a novel of rural Australia he wrote under the pseudonym "Tom Collins." Largely ignored upon publication,
Such is Life is now considered a classic work of Australian literature and perhaps one of the first novels written in an Australian English dialect.
Summary
Rigby’s Romance (1921) is a novel by Joseph Furphy. Written under his pseudonym “Tom Collins,” Rigby’s Romance is a sequel of sorts to Such is Life, a unique and challenging story that took decades to achieve a proper audience. Earning comparisons to the works of Melville and Twain, Furphy’s novel is considered a landmark of Australian literature. “Just as a bale of wool is dumped, by hydraulic pressure, to less than half its normal size, I scientifically compressed something like twenty-four hours' sleep into the interval between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. Then a touch of what you call dyspepsia and I call laziness, kept me debating with myself for another swift-running hour.” Between such beguiling narration and lively conversations with the characters he meets on his travels through the Australian outback, Tom Collins presents himself as a philosophizing everyman, a prototype of such characters as Joyce’s Leopold Bloom and Beckett’s Molloy. Journeying in search of his friend Jefferson Rigby, a gentleman and adventurer like himself, Collins reflects on their history together and longs for his company. When the two meet up, they engage in a long discussion on politics and the nature of humanity, touching on topics as strange and diverse as Australia’s legendary wildlife. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Joseph Furphy’s Rigby’s Romance is a classic work of Australian literature reimagined for modern readers.
