TURNER, Ethel. SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS.

TURNER, Ethel. SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS. Octavo, three plates, illustrations throughout, recased in original red cloth over bevelled boards, gilt extra. London, Ward, Lock & Bowden, 1894. Rare: the first edition, UK issue, of Ethel Turner’s classic first book, translated into at least eight languages and reprinted in English so often that there is no authoritative count of the editions. Turner was very conscious of the quite revolutionary nature of her novel, as one can see from her introductory remarks. This was the first Australian children’s book to present children realistically, with both good and bad behaviours and characteristics, rather than as the idealised pious prigs hitherto commonly presented in English children’s literature. The novel was an important expression of the nationalist sentiment of the times and, in many respects, one of the single most significant expressions of it. Turner was quite deliberate in stating that it was the ‘Australianness’ of her characters, both child and adult, that determined her to adopt this revolutionary style of characterisation. Her treatment, for example, of Meg’s unsuccessful adventure in flirtation at sweet sixteen is quite remarkable both for the, at the time, uncommonly daring plot that has an adolescent girl arranging to meet a young man some years her senior secretly and late in the evening, and for the truthfulness of Turner’s presentation of Meg’s inner turmoil. It was this ‘bold and free’ but engagingly unaffected nature of Australian young women that was remarked upon by visitors from the earliest years of the colony well into the twentieth century. Seven Little Australians also brought about a revolution in Australian reading habits. Before the publication of this novel, few if any such stories for young people were published for an Australian audience. Australian-produced children’s books were largely ephemeral or didactic publications and for children’s fiction the Australian market was satisfied by the British publications of British authors with a few Americans thrown in. Recreational reading for the Australian child was entirely an imported product. Although published in England, this novel marked the single most radical change in the reading habits of young Australians and consequently in the practice of Australian writing and publishing for children. Michael Richards has described Seven Little Australians as ‘the book at the heart of the 1890s’, while Brenda Niall characterised the whole decade as Ethel Turner’s: “this was the decade of little pickles, little rebels, little larrikins and – instead of young Anglo-Australians – little Australians”. Cains, 168; People, Print & Paper, 201; Wantrup (2023), 522a (UK issue).