than their English models, and the fact that their contents were Australian
was not sufficient in itself to obtain for them adequate support.
Newspapers have played a far more important part in our literary world.
`The Australasian', `Sydney Mail' and `Queenslander' have done a good deal
to encourage local writers, but the most powerful influence
has been that of `The Bulletin', started in Sydney in 1880.
Its racy, irreverent tone and its humour are characteristically Australian,
and through its columns the first realistic Australian verse of any importance
-- the writings of Henry Lawson and A. B. Paterson -- became widely known.
When published in book form, their verses met with phenomenal success;
Paterson's "The Man from Snowy River" (1895) having already attained
a circulation of over thirty thousand copies. It is the first
of a long series of volumes, issued during the last ten years, whose character
is far more distinctively Australian than that of their predecessors.
Their number and success are evidences of the lively interest taken
by the present generation here in its native literature.

Australia has now come of age, and is becoming conscious
of its strength and its possibilities. Its writers to-day are, as a rule,
self-reliant and hopeful. They have faith in their own country;
they write of it as they see it, and of their work and their joys and fears,
in simple, direct language. It may be that none of it is poetry
in the grand manner, and that some of it is lacking in technical finish;
but it is a vivid and faithful portrayal of Australia, and its ruggedness
is in character. It is hoped that this selection from the verse that has been
written up to the present time will be found a not unworthy contribution
to the great literature of the English-speaking peoples.