Tales from New England

Abstract

This present collection of roughly chronological story and storyteller focussed essays is largely concerned with narratives-fictional and historical-that explore both earlier white settler and, variously, much later experience of life and culture in the 'New England' region of northern New South Wales. Thus this book answers, in some degree, an earlier desire of the present writer, as was recorded in the Armidale and District Historical Society Journal and Proceedings, No. 32 (1989), that there should be a deliberate biographical and cultural focus on 'more important writers from the region' and that this should treat of their' local perspectives on man and society'. All the fictional and other reflective writings in this present collection were both clustered and pondered on in a subsequent address given by me to the same Historical Society in the winter of 2003, with a title like that of this book, 'Tales from New England'. It also assists with one of the objectives of the University of New England's Heritage Futures Research Centre, namely 'to build a sense of community involvement and 'ownership' of local heritage ... working with historical societies ... and interested individuals'. (Capability Statement of the Heritage Futures Research Centre, July 2001, p.2)' This contextualizing and, to some degree, schematizing a large number of the region's stories was subsequently developed, in my essay-entitled 'Stories and Prose'-in the more comprehensive cultural compilation, High Lean Country: Land, People, and Memory in New England (2006), which was published for the Heritage Futures Research Centre at the University of New England. This earlier essay and book, alike, may serve as background to the more probing analysis presented here of the style and significance of this selection of those significant and regionally atmospheric texts.