Abstract

The Pioneer Soul

In this article, the author focuses on the book "Australia Felix," by Henry Handel Richardson. As a small edition was published here in 1917 under the title of "The Fortunes of Richard Mahony," "Australia Felix" is not, strictly speaking, a new book. But it can be discussed as a new book, for on its appearance a dozen years ago it was almost completely ignored, in England as well as here, both by critical opinion and by the reading public. The book was undoubtedly to a large extent intended as precisely such a study. It is reflected still in our mere physical aspect, so that to the cultured European eye our architectural landscape wears a provisional, jerry-built, and impermanent air, and it remains, of course, in full flower in our glorification of business and material progress.