(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
(The work that captures the essence of simplicity in commo...)
The work that captures the essence of simplicity in common man. The characters are drawn with natural warmth and reflect the author’s viewpoint. The work stimulates philosophical reflections and entertains in the most subtle manner.
Joseph Furphy was an Australian novelist, poet, short story writer, and essayist, who was widely regarded as the "Father of the Australian novel."
Background
Ethnicity:
His father, Samuel Furphy, was originally a tenant farmer from Tanderagee, County Armagh, Ireland.
Joseph Furphy was born on September 26, 1843, at Yering Station in Yering, Victoria, nearly three years after his parents immigrated to Australia from County Armagh in Northern Ireland. Furphy's childhood was spent at Yering, where his father was a tenant farmer, and later at Kyneton, in the Macedon Ranges north-west of Melbourne. Furphy's parents were devout Wesleyan Methodists, and their belief in order, temperance, and the benefits of literature and education was to prove a crucial influence in Furphy's life and writing.
Education
Furphy's early education was conducted at home by his mother, who used the Bible and the works of Shakespeare as text-books for her children, but he later attended school when the family moved to Kangaroo Ground and subsequently to Kyneton.
Career
Furphy left home at an early age to work as a miner, but at twenty-two he returned.
In 1868 Furphy and his wife moved to a selection— a farm on land offered by the government for settlement—in the Lake Cooper district of Victoria, where Furphy’s family had also relocated. He later described their life there as “four or five years’ occupation of the worst selection in Rodney.” Abandoning the farm in pursuit of a more substantial income for his family, he became a teamster, or “bullocky,” transporting wool and other goods by oxcart from remote stations to railway lines and market centres; Such Is Life is based largely on his experiences as a bullock driver during this period.
In 1883, the year in which Such Is Life was set, Furphy was forced to sell his bullocks due to a severe drought which devastated the entire region. He accepted a position at his brother John’s foundry in Shepparton and, for the first time in his life, worked regular hours and enjoyed ample leisure in which to write. In the evenings he worked on the novel Such Is Life, eventually producing well over one thousand pages of manuscript.
Furphy completed the long novel in 1897 and submitted it to the Bulletin, where its merit was immediately recognized. Accepting editorial advice, Furphy excised large sections; the reduced text was published in 1903. Reviews were excellent, but sales were meager. Through the efforts of a family friend, Such Is Life was again published in 1917; other editions were released in England and Australia.
Two subsidiary novels taken from the great mass from which Such Is Life was quarried became Rigby's Romance and The Buln Buln and the Brolga. In 1905 Furphy submitted the former to a miners newspaper, where it was serialized; it came out in book form in 1921. The Buln Buln and the Brolga was not published until 1946. Both novels rely for their interest on their association with the greater work.
In 1905 Furphy moved to Western Australia, where two of his sons had established a business. He died at Claremont, a suburb of Perth, on September 13, 1912.
Achievements
Joseph Furphy is widely regarded as the "Father of the Australian novel." He mostly wrote under the pseudonym Tom Collins and is chiefly remembered as the author of Such Is Life. Furphy’s other major works, Rigby’s Romance (serialized 1905; published in book form, 1921) and The Buln Buln and the Brolga (published posthumously in 1948), were written from chapters cut from the original of Such Is Life. His Poems were published in 1916.
Furphy's popularity may have influenced the usage of the Australian slang word "furphy", meaning a "tall story". However, scholars consider it more likely that the word originated with water carts, produced in large numbers by J. Furphy & Sons, a company owned by Furphy's brother John.
Quotations:
"Age cannot limit him, nor use exhaust his infinite mendacity."
"Who can control his fate? asks the ruined Othello. No one, indeed. But everyone controls his option, chooses his alternative."
"'English fair play' is a fine expression. It justifies the bashing of the puny draper's assistant by the big hairy blacksmith, and this to the perfect satisfaction of both parties, if they are worthy the name of Englishman."
"Such is life, my fellow-mummers-just like a poor player that bluffs and feints his hour upon the stage, and then cheapens down to mere nonentity. But let me not hear any small witticism to the further effect that its story is a tale told by a vulgarian, full of slang and blanky, signifying-nothing."
Personality
Shrewd, proud and tolerant, Furphy had a quiet sense of humor and was self-effacing and devoted to his family— characteristics which were reflected in his writing.
Connections
At the age of 25, Furphy met Leonie Germain, a sixteen-year-old French immigrant, and in 1866 they were married. It proved an ill-fated match: the couple had little in common, and although they remained together for the rest of Furphy's life the marriage seems to have been an unhappy one. They had two sons.
Father:
Samuel Furphy
He was originally a tenant farmer from Tanderagee.
