This anthology collects the best examples of Australian gothic short stories from colonial times. Demonic bird cries, grisly corpses, ghostly women and psychotic station-owners populate a colonial landscape which is the stuff of nightmare. In stories by Marcus Clarke, Mary Fortune and Henry Lawson, the colonial homestead is wracked by haunted images of murder and revenge. Settlers are disoriented and traumatised as they stumble into forbidden places and explorers disappear, only to return as ghostly figures with terrible tales to tell. These compelling stories are the dark underside to the usual story of colonial progress, promise and nation-building, and reveal just how vivid the gothic imagination is at the heart of Australian fiction.

About the Author

Ken Gelder is a Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Melbourne. His books include Reading the Vampire (1994), Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field (2004) and Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007). He is also co-author, with Jane M. Jacobs, of Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (MUP 1998). Rachael Weaver is a research fellow in literary studies at the University of Melbourne. Her book, The Criminal of the Century, was published in 2006.