Dear Friends, we are excited to release Henry Lawson’s only play, Pinter’s Son Jim, into the world this ANZAC Day. Many members of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force carried Henry Lawon’s stories and poems with them to the frontlines and nearly all would have known him from the wildly popular periodicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some would even have had his verse memorised.
The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 is commonly understood as a crucible of Australian national identity, where the fledgling nation proved itself on the world stage for the first time. This is of course an oversimplification; what happened after Gallipoli in the Australian consciousness could not have arisen without the work of the writers and artist of the 1890s (and before), showing Australians to themselves, with Lawson being the quintessential figure of that period. His shearers and larrikins became the diggers of the First World War.
Among Lawson’s work the diggers would not have known is Pinter’s Son Jim, which was not published until 1984 as part of his door-stopping Complete Works (Lansdowne). Bonfire Books is proud today to publish Pinter’s Son Jim for the first time as a stand-alone work. Pinter is a tragic-comic-romantic slapstick story of wrongful conviction, mining fraud, exile and love in red sand Australia. This edition features a new Preface and “The Hero of Redclay” a darker retelling of the Pinter narrative in short story form.
Without glorifying tawdry politics, dubious war aims or violence for its own sake, it is appropriate to commemorate this day and the lives of the men and women who, through no fault of their own, gave the ultimate sacrifice.
To our Australian and New Zealand readers, enjoy the day off!
Pinter’s Son Jim is available here for Australian readers and coming soon through Amazon.