2003 At Home in Australia

Description

Author's Presentation Copy, Colour Plates, First Edition, Illustrated, Original Binding, Publishers' Original Binding, Signed, With Dustwrapper

First edition. Signed and inscribed by the author to the front free endpaper, in presentation to Carmen Callil, an Australian publisher who founded Virago Press in 1973, to "publish books which celebrated women and women's lives, and which would, by so doing, spread the message of women's liberation to the whole population". Virago publish works by new and neglected female authors, publishing the works by authors such as Daphne du Maurier, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Margaret Atwood, and Angela Carter, all with a distinctive green spine synonymous with Virago. Illustrated with over two hundred images from the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, some of which are in colour. An intensely personal and deeply felt account of a nation's history and the strength of character that enabled Australians to survive in their strange, ancient land. This is a many-layered story that depicts the make and remaking of a nation, being a social history from the trials of the frontier to the hedonistic urban society of the present day. Written by Peter Conrad, an Australian-born academic specialising in English literature, who taught at Christ Church at the University of Oxford, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.