Foundational fictions in South Australian history; Pens and Bayonets: Letters from the front by soldiers of Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, during the great war; Valour and violets: South Australia in the great war [Book reviews]

Abstract

Among the many publications of 2018 were three books that focused on aspects of South Australian history. Carolyn Collins and Paul Sendziuk's edited collection of papers, titled Foundational Fictions in South Australian History; Robert Kearney and Sharon Cleary's lavishly illustrated popular history, titled Valour & Violets: South Australia in the Great War, and Don Longo's edited collection of First World War letters, titled Pens and Bayonets: Letters from the Front by soldiers of Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, during the Great War. These books come at a time when local and state-oriented histories are of growing scholarly and public interest. National histories can be problematic in their generalisations, their weighting of metropolitan sources over regional sources, and in their focus on east coast experiences over those of the rest of the country. Australia has a diverse history, and the proliferation of state and locally-focused studies can help highlight that diversity and shed light on the nuances in this history. However, as the following discussion will demonstrate, while the three books reviewed here take a local/state focus as a defining element of their construct, only one of the three, Foundational Fictions, manages to sufficiently justify the value of that focus.