The Boy in the Bush

This is the first critical edition of The Boy in the Bush a novel whose unlikely genesis has been shrouded in mystery and the subject of claim and counter-claim. A systematic study of all the extant textual documents has revealed a process of composition and revision which qualifies the novel to be treated unequivocally as part of the Lawrence canon. At Lawrence's suggestion an Australian nurse and part-time author, Mollie Skinner (whom he had met in 1922), wrote a tale set in late nineteenth-century Western Australia about a newly-arrived young Englishman's reactions to Perth and the outback. Lawrence's complete rewriting converted her probably amateurish and timid production into an ambitious, powerful novel. The development of a fierce independence from 'civilised' mores represented a daring alteration of the original plot, but meant that The Boy in the Bush would be subject to bowdlerising by cautious publishers. The reading text here established eliminates all such instances of censorship and strips away the thousands of regularisings and miscopyings introduced by typists and typesetters. Based on Lawrence's autographed manuscript, the text meticulously incorporates his subsequent revisions in the typescripts and proofs. In recording the variant readings of typescripts and first English and American editions, the textual apparatus allows the reader to follow the novel's compositional development. In the explanatory notes a special effort has been made to distinguish both the local and historical material that must have originated with Mollie Skinner, and also Lawrence's adaptations of it. Appendixes provide maps, an outline history of the colony, Jack Grant's genealogy and two essays Lawrence wrote about the collaboration, one never before printed in English.