DOROTHEA MACKELLAR:

Foreword by Beverly Kingston

It is nearly a hundred years since Dorothea Mackellar wrote ‘My Country’. First appearing in London 1908, it appealed to a rising sense of nationalism. It became a kind of unofficial Australian anthem, frequently included in collections for use in schools, and regularly recited by homesick Australians abroad.

Dorothea Mackellar was born in Sydney in 1885. Her father was a prominent doctor and her mother belonged to a well-known family of pastoralists and investors.

Educated at home, she grew up competent, informed, and observant. Her family’s pastoral interests provided her with background for some of her writing, including her best-known poems, but her work also includes some fine observations of Sydney and of city life, and some interesting translations Spanish, French and Japanese written during her family’s frequent trips abroad.

This collection includes some poems that have not been re-published since their author originally issued them. The foreword is by Beverley Kingston, one of Australia’s most prominent historians of women and women’s work. The illustrations, reproduced in full colour, are the work of Tamworth artist, Jean Isherwood, OAM FRAS, whose magnificent series to accompany ‘My Country’ exists, as water-colour studies, in the Gunnedah Bicentennial Creative Arts Centre.