Coonardoo

Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Coonardoo was a national prize winner in 1928, and one of the most widely taught works of Australian literature in the twentieth century. Few books have attracted such differing assessments: brilliantly authentic, completely fabricated, incisive realism, ‘a fairytale’. The author herself attracted controversy as ‘the red witch’, a sobriquet used as the title for Nathan Hobby’s recent biography.

For the first time, the depth of Prichard’s research into the colonial history of the Pilbara, along with her family connections to that past, are explained. And for the first time, the different versions of Coonardoo—which first appeared as a magazine serial, then in books prepared by publishers in London, New York, then Sydney—are compared, revealing ‘an inveterate reviser’ at work.

Compiled with the help of dozens of experts in fields ranging from linguistics to botany, this scholarly edition gives scholars and general readers new perspectives on a major work of Australian literature.