For the Term of His Natural Life [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION For the Term ojHis Natural Life is a national monument. A hundred years after it was written it is still in many ways the outstanding Australian work oi the creative imagination. More sophisticated novels have appeared but few which rival its vigour. It remains a colonial book and it recalls colonial times but it keeps them vividly alive. I think no other story—not even Richard Mahony—has had such an impact. Today, after a period ol doldrums (and all colonial productions have sufiered that), it is experiencing a revival. And that is so m spite of many obvious crudities, which modern readers, young ones particularly, seem to be able to take in their stride. In His Natural Lije melodrama runs riot and coincidence is uninhibited. But the substance holds. I have referred to two titles. This calls for an explanation. The book has become so firmly a part of Australian tradition under the longer one—For the Term oj . . . —that we no longer question it and it seems punctilious to insist that those words never appeared on «he title page in Marcus Clarke's own time. The original serial, which appeared in the Australian Journal 1870-72, and its revisions (one for George Robertson, Melbourne, 1874, and one, almost the same, for Richard Bentlcy, London, 1875), were all called His Natural Life-, but when Robertson and Bcntley both reissued the book in 1885, they gave it the " Term " title, which then stuck. When Angus and Robertson reprinted the serial text, ed. Hilary Lofting—a valuable edition with illustrations reproduced from the original magazine—the " Term " title was used. How it arose is unexplained though it may not be pointless to guess that it could have been an afterthought of Clarke's respected by the publishers. Once established it seemed inevitable. And yet it is not in all respects an improvement. It was an obvious phrase but as it falls on the ear it stresses time and endurance rather than nature, and I am sure this was not Clarke's first intention, whatever may have been his last. (I hope to make this clear.) However, the change was acceptable to the public, for whom the book became tantamount to history—its function was mythopoeic—and therefore " term " (meaning a period of unpleasantness which had come to its end) seemed to make plain sense, whereas the stress on " nature " raised philosophical questions lying for the most part beyond the common colonial range of thought. Clarke himself, joking with his friend Cyril Hopkins, once referred to the