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All That Swagger
All That Swagger has been acclaimed by critics as one of the finest Australian novels yet written. The story grows from the core outwards from one who feels the magic of Australia. The characters are rooted in the soil, the forest, as the early pioneers actually were. One theme stresses character - that fortitude of purpose, hardihood courage, integrity, which must forever be the foundation of any sound and ethical State, or state of society.
It presents the heroic single-handedness with which the unique Australian continent has been explored, surveyed, fenced, cleared, ploughed, and is now guarded by a virile people.
Here is a vast canvas, State-wide, and as long as history itself -insofar as it contains the portrayal of life and development in this outpost of the British Empire. Skill and circumstance have prolifically combined in the production. The writer moves living pieces on the squares of a mammoth chessboard, and she plays the game in a way that shows clearly that she understands the gambit of life and all its variations.
All That Swagger is all Australian in every word. Only an Australian could have written it.
(From the dust-jacket blurb of the 1947 hardback edition).
No ISBN,
It presents the heroic single-handedness with which the unique Australian continent has been explored, surveyed, fenced, cleared, ploughed, and is now guarded by a virile people.
Here is a vast canvas, State-wide, and as long as history itself -insofar as it contains the portrayal of life and development in this outpost of the British Empire. Skill and circumstance have prolifically combined in the production. The writer moves living pieces on the squares of a mammoth chessboard, and she plays the game in a way that shows clearly that she understands the gambit of life and all its variations.
All That Swagger is all Australian in every word. Only an Australian could have written it.
(From the dust-jacket blurb of the 1947 hardback edition).
No ISBN,
418 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 1936
About the author
Miles Franklin
65 books85 followersStella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin was born in 1879 in rural New South Wales.
My Brilliant Career
, her first novel, was published to much excitement and acclaim. She moved to Sydney where she became involved in feminist and literary circles and then onto the United States of America in 1907.
She was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature, and she actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals, and organisations of writers. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award.
She was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature, and she actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals, and organisations of writers. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 6, 2018
All That Swagger by Miles Franklin
This novel is considered one of the first great novels of the settling of Australia by Europeans. It covers 100 years from the 1830s, a period when young men and women chose to leave their homes in Europe to make a life for themselves in what they understood to be the empty land of Australia. The central character of the novel is Danny Delacey, the 18-year old Protestant son of a college teacher, who persuades his Catholic girlfriend from a financially prosperous farming family, 19-year old Johanna Cooley, to elope with him to Australia. He believes, incorrectly, that free land grants are available for young people like him who are willing to work hard to build the country. Fortunately, an already wealthy landowner, George Moore, returning to Australia on the same ship, takes them under his wing and after briefly trying to make it on his own Danny accepts employment with him.
What follows is the gripping saga of Danny and Johanna’s role in settling the southern highlands of New South Wales and the children and grandchildren who carried on, or not, their legacy. It is richly written story about the realities of life opening a new area of a country. When Danny gets his wish to strike out on his own Franklin leaves us in no doubt of the hardships, crude living conditions and dangers that they had to deal with.
What makes this novel outstanding is the way Franklin establishes Danny as her idea of the sort of people who should be the mainstay of the country, the people who will build an Australia that is strong and vibrant. Danny is honest to a fault and generous without limit. He believes in keeping his word no matter what the cost and is almost driven to poverty by his belief that whoever shows up at the door should be housed and fed for as long as they need. He regards the aborigines as the original settlers and has no problem paying them `rent’, usually a steer a year, for his use of their land. He is also more than ready to state his political views regardless of the company, believing that he must be true to his principles. This approach sets him up as an ideal against characters who have a different view of what their priorities should be. Not only does Danny have to keep marauding wildlife at bay, but he is cheated in business by people who do not keep their end of the bargain, loses stock to neighbors he assumed was his friends and is constantly trying to keep his financial head above waters as the economy changes. He breeds and trains horses with a national reputation but when the bicycle is invented he needs to pivot to another business and does. He also has a try at goldmining with disastrous results.
Franklin also uses the character of Johanna to demonstrate how the social aspirations and divisions of their homeland often came along with these immigrants or re-emerged once they had successfully built communities and resorted to their homelands as the model for structuring them. Johanna longs for the `elegancies’ she grew up used to, and she and other women, more than men, strive to set up the social hierarchies they left behind. The presence of ex-convicts who have paid their debt to society and now settle and work the land alongside the immigrants, must be come to terms with. As hard as she works, often on her own with the children as Danny is off on some new project or adventure, Johanna is torn between her passionate love for her husband and her Catholic guilt about having abandoned her Irish family.
(Stella Maria Sarah) Miles Franklin was born in the southern highlands of New South Wales, Australia in 1879. Her forbears were early settlers in that area so while this novel is not directly autobiographical it is informed by her experience and the accounts of the older generations of her family. She is best known in the US for her novel “My Brilliant Career” which was made into and award-winning film in 1979. The book was published to considerable uproar in 1904 because of its feminist themes and the sequel “My Career Goes Bung” was not published until 1946 because it was thought “too advanced.” “All That Swagger” was published in 1935 to great acclaim and was her last big novel. So highly regarded were her depictions of the settlement and development of Australia that its foremost literary prize is named after her.
I did not want this book to end.
This novel is considered one of the first great novels of the settling of Australia by Europeans. It covers 100 years from the 1830s, a period when young men and women chose to leave their homes in Europe to make a life for themselves in what they understood to be the empty land of Australia. The central character of the novel is Danny Delacey, the 18-year old Protestant son of a college teacher, who persuades his Catholic girlfriend from a financially prosperous farming family, 19-year old Johanna Cooley, to elope with him to Australia. He believes, incorrectly, that free land grants are available for young people like him who are willing to work hard to build the country. Fortunately, an already wealthy landowner, George Moore, returning to Australia on the same ship, takes them under his wing and after briefly trying to make it on his own Danny accepts employment with him.
What follows is the gripping saga of Danny and Johanna’s role in settling the southern highlands of New South Wales and the children and grandchildren who carried on, or not, their legacy. It is richly written story about the realities of life opening a new area of a country. When Danny gets his wish to strike out on his own Franklin leaves us in no doubt of the hardships, crude living conditions and dangers that they had to deal with.
What makes this novel outstanding is the way Franklin establishes Danny as her idea of the sort of people who should be the mainstay of the country, the people who will build an Australia that is strong and vibrant. Danny is honest to a fault and generous without limit. He believes in keeping his word no matter what the cost and is almost driven to poverty by his belief that whoever shows up at the door should be housed and fed for as long as they need. He regards the aborigines as the original settlers and has no problem paying them `rent’, usually a steer a year, for his use of their land. He is also more than ready to state his political views regardless of the company, believing that he must be true to his principles. This approach sets him up as an ideal against characters who have a different view of what their priorities should be. Not only does Danny have to keep marauding wildlife at bay, but he is cheated in business by people who do not keep their end of the bargain, loses stock to neighbors he assumed was his friends and is constantly trying to keep his financial head above waters as the economy changes. He breeds and trains horses with a national reputation but when the bicycle is invented he needs to pivot to another business and does. He also has a try at goldmining with disastrous results.
Franklin also uses the character of Johanna to demonstrate how the social aspirations and divisions of their homeland often came along with these immigrants or re-emerged once they had successfully built communities and resorted to their homelands as the model for structuring them. Johanna longs for the `elegancies’ she grew up used to, and she and other women, more than men, strive to set up the social hierarchies they left behind. The presence of ex-convicts who have paid their debt to society and now settle and work the land alongside the immigrants, must be come to terms with. As hard as she works, often on her own with the children as Danny is off on some new project or adventure, Johanna is torn between her passionate love for her husband and her Catholic guilt about having abandoned her Irish family.
(Stella Maria Sarah) Miles Franklin was born in the southern highlands of New South Wales, Australia in 1879. Her forbears were early settlers in that area so while this novel is not directly autobiographical it is informed by her experience and the accounts of the older generations of her family. She is best known in the US for her novel “My Brilliant Career” which was made into and award-winning film in 1979. The book was published to considerable uproar in 1904 because of its feminist themes and the sequel “My Career Goes Bung” was not published until 1946 because it was thought “too advanced.” “All That Swagger” was published in 1935 to great acclaim and was her last big novel. So highly regarded were her depictions of the settlement and development of Australia that its foremost literary prize is named after her.
I did not want this book to end.
January 15, 2015
I really enjoyed All that swagger. It really captures the poetry of the Australian bush and the courage of those who tried to tame it. Covering three generations, the character of old Danny pervades the novel long after his death. It is beautifully written with complex characters. The phonetic spelling when Danny speaks in his Irish accent made me smile.
February 21, 2022
This book is 418 pages long. I got up to page 382 and could be disgusted no more. Granted this book was written in 1933 therefore the sentiments are of its time,however, the foundations of the racist sentiment are to be found within the pages of this book. It’s a white pride book set in a so called empty land, where Asian immigrants are described as chongs and aboriginal people as deaf and mute. The writing is disjointed and nothing better than reading a gossip column. The British empire at the time, that allowed Australia to ever be explored was funded by the exploits of colonialism. I hated this book so much I left it on a train. I hope it falls under the train and is ruined.
December 18, 2011
My Father gave me this book to read in my late teens. I looked at the book and thought "you seriously want me to read a whole book?" (it's not funny really, it reflects my state of ignorance and complete lack of awareness). I read the book. It wasn't easy to get in to at first but I did and couldn't put it down. I really liked the characters and the grittyness of life and emotions of the D'arcy family. I loved the book.
April 19, 2021
Three stars 'cause I'm feeling generous.
Sometimes a book does not work. It could be bad timing or mood or tiredness or other stuff going on in one’s life. Or sometimes a book is just not for you. No matter what other people say about it, or love about it or admire about it, it could be that, for you, none of those things matter.
All That Swagger was one of those books for me.
The epub ebook format was riddled with spelling mistakes and typos.
It started out okay enough, with a young couple, escaping the poverty of 1833 Ireland, to try and make their fortunes in the new colony of New South Wales. Danny was full of vim and vigour and keen for adventure. He saw himself as an explorer. Johanna preferred more sedate refinements, like a bed and a roof over her head and somewhere safe to have her babies.
Danny made friends easily and wasn’t afraid to deal (fairly) with the local Aboriginal tribes or call out other settlers who were behaving badly. Johanna was afraid to rock the boat and often confused status for genuine friendship.
It was not an easy life. Babies died and Danny was often away, leaving Johanna to basically fend for herself. But by the time the surviving babies had grown into adulthood, I was tired, so very, very tired of this story. And I was only halfway done.
Full review here -https://bronasbooks.com/2021/04/17/al...
Sometimes a book does not work. It could be bad timing or mood or tiredness or other stuff going on in one’s life. Or sometimes a book is just not for you. No matter what other people say about it, or love about it or admire about it, it could be that, for you, none of those things matter.
All That Swagger was one of those books for me.
The epub ebook format was riddled with spelling mistakes and typos.
It started out okay enough, with a young couple, escaping the poverty of 1833 Ireland, to try and make their fortunes in the new colony of New South Wales. Danny was full of vim and vigour and keen for adventure. He saw himself as an explorer. Johanna preferred more sedate refinements, like a bed and a roof over her head and somewhere safe to have her babies.
Danny made friends easily and wasn’t afraid to deal (fairly) with the local Aboriginal tribes or call out other settlers who were behaving badly. Johanna was afraid to rock the boat and often confused status for genuine friendship.
It was not an easy life. Babies died and Danny was often away, leaving Johanna to basically fend for herself. But by the time the surviving babies had grown into adulthood, I was tired, so very, very tired of this story. And I was only halfway done.
Full review here -https://bronasbooks.com/2021/04/17/al...
August 4, 2019
Historical fiction about a family of Irish-Australian pioneers. Miles Franklin has a vision of the meaning of Australia that still percolates up when you visit. "I love my country," people told me. Aboriginal people, still dealing with the ravages of colonizing violence, also offer a "welcome to country." Franklin's protagonist Danny Delacy is a man of peace, whose philosophy of life is that character is all that matters, who saw no reason for hoarding, whose inheritance to his progeny was an outlook.
April 9, 2021
Literally can't believe that this doesn't have more attention! Wonderful book, and very progressive for its time!
July 27, 2024
Miles Franklin is better known for her book, "My Brilliant Career", which was made into a film, but "All That Swagger", to me, tells more of the history of Australia and what it means to be an Australian. The characters are flawed, have their weaknesses and their strengths and, as such, are admired by some and deplored by others. In the Australian way, these opinions can oscillate over time. In between the lines of this epic saga that spans four generations, there is prophecy in the acceptance of those queer people who do not fit the mould, especially among women. Franklin, in 1933, through her characters, considered colonisation as an invasion and conveyed a despair that a country, a world, so full of resources could leave any of its inhabitants hungry and unsheltered. Her philosophy is written as an adventurous and accessible yarn.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews