Question #123637. Asked by Aussiedrongo.
Last updated Aug 30 2016.
Originally posted Sep 26 2011 11:35 PM.
Stephens' greatest achievement as an editor was the recognition and publication in 1903 of the novel, Such is Life, an immensely idiosyncratic tome by Joseph Furphy (1843-1912), alias 'Tom Collins'. Furphy was a self-taught labourer from Shepparton, Victoria, who set out in grandiose fashion to write a realistic tale of rural life, 'temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian'. The opening line of this extraordinary book is 'Unemployed at last!'-a good indication of its anti-authoritarian stance. Episodic yet ambitiously philosophical in tone, the book displays Furphy's complicated considerations of free will, fate, and class struggle, couched in very Australian story-lines about 'squatters' and toilers on the land. Largely ignored for years, Such is Life was rediscovered by literary critics in the 1940s as representing an important turning-point in Australian fiction, and remains today a widely-unread but highly-touted masterpiece.