Books by John Lang

In the most extensive work to date on major poets from the mountain South, John Lang takes as his point of departure an oft-quoted remark by Jim Wayne Miller: "Appalachian literature is - and has always been - as decidedly worldly, secular, and profane in its outlook as the [region's] traditional religion appears to be spiritual and otherworldly."

John Lang was Australias first locally born novelist, publishing early work in Sydney in the 1840s and going on to write several bestsellers. The Forgers Wife (1856) is a lively adventure novel, set in an unruly colonial Sydney where everyone is on the make. The forgers wife is a young woman who follows her rakish husband out to Australia and struggles to survive as her marriage falls apart. She soon meets detective George Flower, a powerful man with a cavalier sense of justice and retribution. Flower literally controls the fortunes of the colony: taking on the local bushrangers, instructing colonial authorities, and helping himself to the spoils along the way.First serialised in Frasers Magazine in 1853, The Forgers Wife was popular in its day and was reprinted many times over. It is Australias first detective novel and most likely, the first detective novel in the Anglophone world.This ebook edition includes an introduction by Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver, and a translation of the appendix by Sophie Zins. The text includes both the lightly modernised text of the print edition as well as the unamended original text.It is a powerful, if occasionally painful, book. It sells even now in all the colonies and in England by the thousand...Rolf Boldrewood on Australian Literature, The Advocate (Melbourne), 20 May 1893