Time, Tide and History

Time, Tide and History: Eleanor Darks Fiction is the first book-length edited collection of scholarly essays to treat the full span of Eleanor Darks fiction, advancing a recent revival of critical and scholarly interest in Darks writing. This volume not only establishes a new view of Darks fiction as a whole, but also reflects on the ways in which her fiction speaks to our present moment, in the context of a globally fraught, post-pandemic, Anthropocene era. Above all, the revisiting of Darks fiction is mandated by a desire to recognise the ways in which it anticipates vital debates in Australian literary and national culture today, about settler colonialism and its legacies, and with regard to the histories, condition and status of Australias First Nations people. This volume interweaves varied topical themes, from formal debates about modernism, historical realism and melodrama, to questions about modernitys time and space, about gender and cultural difference, and about the specifics of built and natural environments. Time, Tide and History intentionally loosens the conventions of literary scholarship by including other kinds of work alongside critical and scholarly readings: a written dialogue between two contemporary historians about Darks legacy, and a biographical piece on the life and role of Eleanor Darks husband, Eric Payten Dark. Bringing together the interwar fictions feminist and modernist dimensions with the historical turn of The Timeless Land trilogy, the essays in Time, Tide and History collectively pursue ethical and political questions while teasing out the distinctive thematic, formal and aesthetic features of Darks fiction.