Such Is Life

Furphy, Joseph, 1843-1912Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.2

Word count: 922K words
Chapters: 93

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Such Is Life by Joseph FurphyAuthor: Furphy, Joseph, 1843-1912,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Oct 1, 2002

Editor's review

Such Is Life is a novel by the Australian writer Joseph Furphy, set in rural New South Wales at the end of the 19th century. Through its narrator it strings together the lives of itinerant workers, graziers and small country folk. Its value lies not in a tight plot but in its faithful record of the speech, dialect and everyday detail of bush life, with a strong oral storytelling flavour and a vivid sense of place; it is regarded as a substantial work in the Australian literary tradition. Readers might attend to the tension between the narrator's observing eye and the various characters' own accounts, and see how the author assembles a picture of the era from seemingly loose anecdotes. It suits readers interested in regional writing in English literature and the social history of the colonial period, and rewards slow reading; those seeking a driving story may find the pace leisurely and the threads scattered.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in Australian literature and rural society of the colonial period
Students of regional English writing, dialect and oral narrative traditions
Readers who enjoy leisurely long novels built from characters' encounters and anecdotes
English readers who want to encounter late-19th-century Australian bush life in the original

Not a good fit for

Readers of genre fiction who expect strong plotting and fast pacing
Beginners with little patience for heavy dialect spelling and colloquial expression
Readers who want only a plot summary and are unwilling to dwell on everyday detail

Reading tips

Read the opening chapters first to get used to the narrator's tone and the dialect spelling, then proceed chapter by chapter.
Jot down the characters as they appear and their occupations to keep track of relationships among the loose anecdotes.
Read alongside background material on rural history in colonial Australia to understand the context.
Don't feel obliged to finish in one go; read in segments by character and story, with brief notes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What is the narrative structure of this book?

The book follows the narrator's travels and encounters, linking a series of relatively independent character stories and scenes. The plot moves slowly, and its focus is on language, characters' voices and details of country life rather than on a single dramatic through-line.

Can I read the original if my English is only average?

The book makes heavy use of dialect spelling and colloquial expression, which poses difficulties for non-native readers. A solid foundation in English reading is advisable, along with notes or background material; beginners might start with a translation or an introductory guide.

What are the features of this edition?

This edition comes from Project Gutenberg. It is a free ebook, a public-domain English literary text, convenient to search and read on electronic devices, but it contains no modern scholarly notes or introduction, so readers should supplement the background material themselves.

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About the author

Furphy, Joseph, 1843-1912 Author · Australian · 1843–1912

Joseph Furphy (1843–1912) was an Australian novelist who published under the pen name Tom Collins. His surviving output is small; this library holds only one of his works, the novel Such Is Life. Public information about him is limited, and details of his life are difficult to verify, yet this single work reveals the basic character of his writing: set in rural and bush life in Australia, it uses a loose, digressive narrative structure and a colloquial, ironic language, and is often regarded as an plain but distinctive work of colonial Australian literature, an inspiration to later writers portraying Australian life.