Novel
Seven Little Australians
Ethel Turner · 1894
Synopsis
In the 1880s, on the outskirts of Sydney, the seven Woolcot children live at Misrule with their father, the captain, a stern officer, and his young wife Esther, who is twenty. Meg, the eldest, is sixteen, Pip fourteen, Judy thirteen; then come Nell, Bunty, Baby and the youngest, nicknamed the General. After a prank by Judy and Pip that makes a fool of their father at his barracks, Judy is sent to boarding school in the Blue Mountains. Unhappy, she runs away and walks home; the others hide her in an abandoned attic, unknown to their stepmother.
Context
Written in 1893, the novel appeared in London the following year from Ward, Lock and Bowden and was an immediate success; it has never stopped being reprinted, and in 1994 it was the only book by an Australian author to have remained available for a hundred years. Three sequels continued the story of the family. Arthur Greville Collins brought it to the screen in 1939, Australian public television made a ten-episode series from it in 1973, with Leonard Teale as the captain, and a musical was staged in 1988.
Who it is for
A children's novel in English, told from a child's level; the BnF lists no French translation of it.
Prizes and reception
More than two million copies sold in English and more than fifty reprints, according to Reading Australia.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.