Merrii Wulla (4 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. 223 pages including the four pages author's preface. Publication estimated 1893. Top edge lightly foxed, front edge slightly spotted, bottom corners of covers and top of spine chipped, covers discoloured.

hardbound. Condition: Good. Anti-union novel based on the 1891 Shearer's Strike, written under the pseudonym Wulla Merrii, now attributed to Mary Gilmore's brother John Cameron;no publisher's details or date were given with this edition, Trove mentions two editions, 1893 and 1897 (I suspect this is the latter edition); generally good throughout, with tanned patches to some pages, foxing to endpapers, prelims and text block; boards rubbed and with some staining, corners knocked and worn. no dustwrapper. 223pp. 8vo. Good.…

hardcover. Condition: very good. n.p. [Brisbane 1893?]. Octavo publisher's illustrated boards. A few small knicks, a rather good copy. The attribution to Cameron seems fairly well accepted. A virulently anti-union novel so it's no surprise that neither the printer nor author dared put their name on it (both the title and last leaf appear to be cancels - redone without colophon or any other details). Can we presume that fear of retribution also accounts for the fact that so many copies were clearly never circulated until recent decades? Surely it couldn't be the writing, plot, paper thin characters: villainous unionists and cartoon blacks? Plenty of other novels have done well on worse. Cameron was a pastoralist and politician, a leader of the anti-union movement (they "aimed at nothing short of REVOLUTION") and a central figure in the strike. A confirmed White Australian he was known to declare, I gather while campaigning for office, that "I have never believed in the principle of one man one vote, and nothing will ever convince me that men should have equal voting rights".…

[s.l.] : [s.n.], [1893]. Octavo, illustrated boards (minor rubbing), recent bookplate to front pastedown, pp. 223; a very good copy. A novel set against the 1891 Queensland Shearer's Strike. This dispute between unionised and non-unionised shearers is regarded as a direct precursor to the formation of the Australian Labor Party. The novel is written from an anti-union perspective. This work has often been attributed to John Alexander Cameron, a pastoralist and anti-unionist advocate prominent in Queensland politics of the time. Ferguson, 18915.…