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Representations of Plants in Australian Literature

From the feared to the Revered

Representations of Plants in Australian Literature cover

Representations of Plants in Australian Literature

From the feared to the Revered

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Pre-order. Available Nov 12 2026
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Description

Australia has some of the most unusual and unique plants in the world and today many of these plants are appreciated and valued. However, this has not always been the case. Through Australia's colonial and settler history plants have been misunderstood, cursed, and demonised. There was also a total disregard for the Indigenous Peoples' understanding of the native plants. An area where these struggles and tensions reveal themselves is in the creative imaginings of authors. This book explores how plants have been written about, represented, and imagined from the early writings of colonial authors where plants are conquered, ripped out and replanted to contemporary representations of native, hybrid and collective gardens. It explores the complex and diverse relationships that authors and plants have had in an Australian context and discusses how writers have written about plants to raise not only ecological concerns but also to offer alternatives to knowledge systems and ideologies. While Australian art and paintings have been well researched and written about in their representations of plants there has been little on the relationship between literature and plants. This book goes someway into addressing this gap.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter One: The Bush: Colonial Fear of the Power of the Plant
Chapter Two: Plants in Australian Children's Literature
Chapter Three: Oh for an English Garden: Writing Australian Women into the Garden
Chapter Four: Growing Food in the Garden: Migrant Writing and connecting with home
Chapter Five: Plants and Animals
Chapter Six: Indigenous Gardens
Conclusion

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Nov 12 2026
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Pages 224
ISBN 9798216260615
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Series Critical Plant Studies
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

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