The short story has always been as significant a component of Australian literature as the novel, the poem or the play. This major anthology, covering over 120 years of Australian fiction, assembles the richly varied talents of 50 of the leading exponents of the genre. Beginning with Marcus Clarke and closing with Tim Winton, it includes Henry Lawson and Henry Handel Richardson, and such varied contemporaries as Frank Moorhouse, Helen Garner and Peter Carey. Illustrating both realist and experimental tendencies in the Australian short story, Michael Wilding's selection also illuminates the immense cultural diversity of Australia in the 20th century. Well-known stories such as Human Repetends and The Union Buries its Dead are mixed with original but less familiar examples of the Australian writer's craft and imagination.