 Self published | |
| Author | Frank Dalby Davison |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | novel |
| Publisher | Angus & Robertson, Australia |
Publication date | 1931 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) |
| Pages | 153 |
| Followed by | The Wells of Beersheba |
Man-Shy (1931) is a novel by Australian author Frank Dalby Davison. [1] It won the ALS Gold Medal for Best Novel in 1931. [2]
Set on a Queensland cattle station, the novel tells the story of the interactions between man and beast with the cattle receiving prominence.
The author was originally unable to find a publisher for the novel and was forced to publish it himself. It was later picked up by Angus & Robertson who issued a new edition. [3]
The book was later published successfully in America, under the title The Red Heifer. [4]
On its first release, the reviewer in The Sydney Sun praised Davison's ability to get into the mind of an animal without descending into bathos. The review concluded: "This author knows his subject, and brings to the work also a great love of all dumb brutes as well as a peculiarly fine descriptive gift. His station scenes are so vividly recalled that the reader can almost hear the bellowing of the beasts and the crack of the stockwhips." [5]
Aidan de Brune, writing in The West Australian in a retrospective of the author's work stated that "Like the painter of pictures in oils, the writer, who is a painter of pictures in words, must trust his eye, and use his eye, before he begins to use his pen. Frank Davison understands this. He has looked closely at Australia before beginning to write about it. He has looked through his own eyes and not through the spectacles kindly provided for our use by English, and other visitors, to this country. That is why the work of Frank Dalby Davison is a portent for the future of the Australian novel." [3]
A reviewer in The Queensland Times noted that "With a happy gift of expression, Mr. Davison has painted the ordinary round of work on a cattle station with startling new tints, and always from the angle of the beast on the hoof." [6]
In Alex Miller's novel Coal Creek, hard-boiled inmates at Stuart prison soften at this tale of a red heifer's bid for freedom, "and were like children with it, demanding to have it read to them over and over". [7]
Dalby is a rural town and locality in the Western Downs Region, Queensland, Australia. In the 2021 census, the locality of Dalby had a population of 12,758 people.
Arthurs Creek is a town in Victoria, Australia, 33 kilometres north-east of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Shire of Nillumbik local government area. Arthurs Creek recorded a population of 478 at the 2021 census.
The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for "an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year." From 1928 to 1974 it was awarded by the Australian Literature Society, then from 1983 by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, when the two organisations were merged.
Marjorie Faith Barnard was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian and librarian. She went to school and university in Sydney, and then trained as a librarian. She was employed as a librarian for two periods in her life, but her main passion was writing.
Alexis Wright is a Waanyi writer best known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria and for being the first writer to win the Stella Prize twice, in 2018 for her "collective memoir" of Leigh Bruce "Tracker" Tilmouth and in 2024 for Praiseworthy.Praiseworthy also won her the Miles Franklin Award in 2024, making her the first person to win the Stella Prize and Miles Franklin Award in the same year.
Frank Dalby Davison, also known as F. D. Davison and Freddie Davison, was an Australian novelist and short story writer. Whilst several of his works demonstrated his progressive political philosophy, he is best known as "a writer of animal stories and a sensitive interpreter of Australian bush life in the tradition of Henry Lawson, Joseph Furphy and Vance Palmer." His most popular works were two novels, Man-shy and Dusty, and his short stories.
M. Barnard Eldershaw was the pseudonym used by the twentieth-century Australian literary collaborators Marjorie Barnard (1897–1987) and Flora Eldershaw (1897–1956). In a collaboration that lasted two decades from the late 1920s to the late 1940s, they published 5 novels, 3 histories, a radio drama, a collection of short stories, and several collections of critical essays and lectures.
Bernard Cronin was an Australian author and journalist. With Gertrude Hart, he founded the Old Derelicts' Club in 1920 which later became the Society of Australian Authors.
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