What do you think?
Rate this book
The Pioneers
This endearing 19th-century family saga follows the lives, loves and losses of one pioneering family and two escaped convicts as they open up the land in Victoria, Australia. This classic Australian story, which won the Hodder & Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize for Australasia, commands a place in the canon of Australian literature and offers a fascinating record and reflection of early Australian life and perspectives.
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 27, 1915
1 person is currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Katharine Susannah Prichard
39 books15 followersKatharine Susannah Prichard was born in Levuka, Fiji in 1883, and spent her childhood in Launceston, Tasmania, before moving to Melbourne, where she won a scholarship to South Melbourne College. Her father, Tom Prichard, was editor of the Melbourne Sun newspaper. She worked as a governess and journalist in Victoria then travelled to England in 1908. Her first novel, The Pioneers (1915), won the Hodder & Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize. After her return to Australia, the romance Windlestraws and her first novel of a mining community, Black Opal were published.
Prichard moved with her husband, war hero Hugo "Jim" Throssell, VC, to Greenmount, Western Australia, in 1920 and lived at 11 Old York Road for much of the rest of her life. She wrote most of her novels and stories in a self-contained weatherboard workroom near the house. In her personal life she always referred to herself as Mrs Hugo Throssell. She had one son, Ric Throssell, later a diplomat and writer.
Prichard moved with her husband, war hero Hugo "Jim" Throssell, VC, to Greenmount, Western Australia, in 1920 and lived at 11 Old York Road for much of the rest of her life. She wrote most of her novels and stories in a self-contained weatherboard workroom near the house. In her personal life she always referred to herself as Mrs Hugo Throssell. She had one son, Ric Throssell, later a diplomat and writer.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 4, 2016
My last author for my Literary Birthdays challenge this year was Katharine Susannah Prichard, born December 4, 1883 in Fiji. Her family moved to Tasmania when she was a child, and later to Australia, where she lived the rest of her life.
I had read one other Prichard title, Black Opal, and was excited about reading this one. I was certainly not disappointed. The story follows Donald Cameron and his wife Mary as they arrive on the 100 acres of land he had chosen for himself. They are the first to settle in this particular area, and must do all the work together: clearing the land, building shelter for themselves and their livestock.
These few sentences tell us exactly the kind of man Donald is:
"The man had put his shoulder to the wheel, helping the horses up the steep banks and long, slippery sidings. He had stood trembling and sweating with them when heavy places in the road were past, the veins knotted in his swarthy forehead, the bare column of his throat gasping for the mountain air. There was the same toiling faculty in him that there was in the horses—an instinct to overcome all difficulties by exertion of the muscles of his back."
While Donald is the head of the family, Mary Cameron was the heart of the book, and the main focus after the first few chapters and until their baby son Davey grows up. A year after arriving, when Donald needs to make the long trek back to the nearest town for more supplies, the event that shapes the rest of the book happens. Mary and baby Davey are alone in their little house when the dog becomes restless:
"The dog's eyes were fixed on the trees and scrubby undergrowth to the left of the hut. Every short hair on his lean body bristled. He growled sullenly. Later in the afternoon, when she sat in the clearing spinning and singing with Davey on his shawl beside her, he started to his feet suddenly and snarled fiercely.
Mary looked at him again questioningly and her eyes flew to the edge of the trees in the direction he pointed. No quivering leaf nor threatening sound stirred the quiet. He subsided at her feet after a moment, but his ears, kept pricked, twitched uneasily; his eyes never left the edge of the trees. Once they twisted up to her and she read in them the clear expression of a pitiful uneasiness, the assurance of deathless fidelity, a prayer almost to go into the house."
This was a complex story, with a lot going on between the lines, and hidden secrets lurking beneath the surface for nearly everyone in the book. The people felt real, the situations intense, the story itself was fast-moving, and the country was as much a living, breathing entity as any of the human characters.
I saw in wiki that this book was adapted twice for the big screen, and won a major international award of the day (Hodder & Stoughton All Empire Literary Prize). I can certainly understand why. It is a winner from beginning to end.
I had read one other Prichard title, Black Opal, and was excited about reading this one. I was certainly not disappointed. The story follows Donald Cameron and his wife Mary as they arrive on the 100 acres of land he had chosen for himself. They are the first to settle in this particular area, and must do all the work together: clearing the land, building shelter for themselves and their livestock.
These few sentences tell us exactly the kind of man Donald is:
"The man had put his shoulder to the wheel, helping the horses up the steep banks and long, slippery sidings. He had stood trembling and sweating with them when heavy places in the road were past, the veins knotted in his swarthy forehead, the bare column of his throat gasping for the mountain air. There was the same toiling faculty in him that there was in the horses—an instinct to overcome all difficulties by exertion of the muscles of his back."
While Donald is the head of the family, Mary Cameron was the heart of the book, and the main focus after the first few chapters and until their baby son Davey grows up. A year after arriving, when Donald needs to make the long trek back to the nearest town for more supplies, the event that shapes the rest of the book happens. Mary and baby Davey are alone in their little house when the dog becomes restless:
"The dog's eyes were fixed on the trees and scrubby undergrowth to the left of the hut. Every short hair on his lean body bristled. He growled sullenly. Later in the afternoon, when she sat in the clearing spinning and singing with Davey on his shawl beside her, he started to his feet suddenly and snarled fiercely.
Mary looked at him again questioningly and her eyes flew to the edge of the trees in the direction he pointed. No quivering leaf nor threatening sound stirred the quiet. He subsided at her feet after a moment, but his ears, kept pricked, twitched uneasily; his eyes never left the edge of the trees. Once they twisted up to her and she read in them the clear expression of a pitiful uneasiness, the assurance of deathless fidelity, a prayer almost to go into the house."
This was a complex story, with a lot going on between the lines, and hidden secrets lurking beneath the surface for nearly everyone in the book. The people felt real, the situations intense, the story itself was fast-moving, and the country was as much a living, breathing entity as any of the human characters.
I saw in wiki that this book was adapted twice for the big screen, and won a major international award of the day (Hodder & Stoughton All Empire Literary Prize). I can certainly understand why. It is a winner from beginning to end.
December 13, 2017
I need to read more from KSP. Maybe her being the co-founder of the Australian Communist Party made her a black sheep and hence her books are not as widely read as they should be.
Released in 1915 it shows the advantage the author had in living in communities where people who are represented in the book were still living. The book is full of cattle duffing, escaped convicts, the randomness of transportation, bushfires and the pioneer hard work. It also has one of literatures' great evil villains in McNab.
Based in the 1850s the book grows in tension as McNab does his evil things, a three-way competition for the marriage of the feisty Deidre and the unstated love between the schoolmaster and the eternally wise Mrs Cameron.
If Dickens had written this book I would not have been surprised.
Released in 1915 it shows the advantage the author had in living in communities where people who are represented in the book were still living. The book is full of cattle duffing, escaped convicts, the randomness of transportation, bushfires and the pioneer hard work. It also has one of literatures' great evil villains in McNab.
Based in the 1850s the book grows in tension as McNab does his evil things, a three-way competition for the marriage of the feisty Deidre and the unstated love between the schoolmaster and the eternally wise Mrs Cameron.
If Dickens had written this book I would not have been surprised.
October 1, 2013
First published in 1915 this story of a Welch/Scottish couple, Mary and Stephen Cameron, which made the long voyage to Australia as free settlers and arriving in Melbourne soon moved on to Tasmania where they finally settled and started to raise a family. Settlers are disparaged because of the penal migration from Britain but in point of fact many more free settlers migrated to Australia than prisoners. Mary displays an independence and spirit that was the exception rather than the rule of the day. After giving her word not to pursue two escaped prisoners, she importuned on her husband to acquiesce to her will. In all aspects of her life it was void of tergiversation and she never waivered from her beliefs. This woman and indeed all these people impressed me with their courage way of life. Much is written about the migration to and journey westward in North America but comparative few stories tell of the equally daunting tasks performed in Australia to form a proud and free nation. Katharine Prichard wrote a fair number of novels and I wouldn´t hesitate in giving each and every one a go. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a low keyed and down to earth story of hardships, sacrifices and immeasurable rewards.
January 9, 2019
Bill is hosting AWW Gen 2 over at The Australian Legend, and The Pioneers is the book I promised to read for this important literary week in the Australian Literary calendar. Bill defines this second generation of Australian writing as the period between 1890 and 1918. To my surprise I didn't have a single book by a woman writer for that period, so I decided to chase up Katharine Susannah Prichard's output for these years and found her debut novel The Pioneers. Bill distinguishes post WW1 Gen 3 writers from Gen 2 writers by their preoccupation with social realism in urban settings, and thus places Prichard in Gen 3, but as we shall see, The Pioneers belongs with Gen 2 writing because it features the myth of the Pioneers, men and women working together to carve out a space for themselves from [so-called] virgin country.
Katharine Susannah Prichard was born in 1883 and died 1969, and she wrote 13 novels. In the Preface to The Pioneers, KSP tells us that:
The book's blurb tells us that The Pioneers went on to win the Australian section of the £1000 Dominion Competition for fiction in 1915. More properly known as the Hodder and Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize for Australasia, (see here) this prize launched KSP's career as a creative writer.
This is the blurb:
These days, marketers might promote The Pioneers as Rural Romance, which you might guess anyway from that excruciatingly bad cover art by D.L. Allnutt. Poor Deirdre looks as if her arm is dislocated, like a doll with its arm screwed on back-to-front. Davey Cameron's awkward grimace, and her pert expression hints at Difficulties in the Relationship, but the body language suggests that eventually all will be well. Also, there are 'secrets', a trope so clichéd in contemporary commercial 'women's' fiction that the mere mention of the word in a blurb is enough for me to decide that the book is not for me.
However, KSP being KSP, there's a bit more to this novel than a rocky relationship and a secret withheld to the end of the story.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/09/t...
Katharine Susannah Prichard was born in 1883 and died 1969, and she wrote 13 novels. In the Preface to The Pioneers, KSP tells us that:
Notes for The Pioneers were made about 1903 when I was twenty and living in South Gippsland. But it was not until 1913, in London, that I was able to take six months off earning my living as a journalist to write the story which had been simmering in my mind for so long.
The book's blurb tells us that The Pioneers went on to win the Australian section of the £1000 Dominion Competition for fiction in 1915. More properly known as the Hodder and Stoughton All Empire Literature Prize for Australasia, (see here) this prize launched KSP's career as a creative writer.
This is the blurb:
Set in Gippsland, Victoria, this powerful story tells of early settlers and of their unwelcome neighbours - escaped convicts who crossed to the mainland from Van Diemen's Land. Davey Cameron, son of a stern and narrow-minded Scots settler, becomes entangled with cattle-duffing convicts and an unscrupulous shanty-keeper. With the growth of his love for Deirdre, the daughter of a convict, the lives of the characters become more involved, and clouds of tragedy begin to form.
The book, a masterly study of human relations, conveys all the excitement, hard work and despair of pioneering days, and the story comes to life against a background of bushfires, scrub-clearing, home-building and the handling of cattle under semi-primitive conditions.
These days, marketers might promote The Pioneers as Rural Romance, which you might guess anyway from that excruciatingly bad cover art by D.L. Allnutt. Poor Deirdre looks as if her arm is dislocated, like a doll with its arm screwed on back-to-front. Davey Cameron's awkward grimace, and her pert expression hints at Difficulties in the Relationship, but the body language suggests that eventually all will be well. Also, there are 'secrets', a trope so clichéd in contemporary commercial 'women's' fiction that the mere mention of the word in a blurb is enough for me to decide that the book is not for me.
However, KSP being KSP, there's a bit more to this novel than a rocky relationship and a secret withheld to the end of the story.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/09/t...
January 10, 2026
A wonderfully written, highly captivating portrayal of the lives of Australia's early settlers. There are fascinating depictions of the bush, the growth of settlement in an area from the earliest beginnings and on the social composition of early-colonial Australian society.
did-not-finish
March 8, 2012I'm putting this book down for now. I loved the beginning of the book, but it wasn't as interesting after that.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews