The Black Opal by Katharine Susannah Prichard (english novels to improve english TXT) ๐
Description
Katharine Susannah Prichard was born in 1883 to Australian parents then living in Fiji, but she grew up in Tasmania, lived for a while in both Melbourne and London before finally settling in Western Australia. She was one of the co-founders of the Communist Party of Australia in 1921, and her status as a communist and a female writer led to her being frequently under surveillance and harassment by the Australian police and other government authorities.
She wrote The Black Opal in 1921, and the novel focuses on the very close-knit opal-mining community living and working on Fallen Star Ridge, a fictitious location set in New South Wales, Australia. Life is hard for the miners as their fortunes rise and fall with the amounts and quality of black opal they can uncover. Black opal is a beautiful mineral with fiery gleams of color, much valued for jewelry. Finding productive seams of such opal is a matter of both hard work and good luck.
The novel is a well-drawn study of the relationships of the people living on the Ridge, and the two main characters are portrayed with clarity: Michael Brady, an older man much respected by the other miners for this knowledge and ethical approach, and Sophie Rouminof, a beautiful teenage girl who is the darling of the camp but who abruptly runs away to America after being disappointed in love.
Despite the difficulties the individual miners face, there is a community spirit and an agreement on basic values and principles of behavior at the Ridge. But this community of shared endeavor is eventually jeopardized by the influence of outsiders, in particular an American who wishes to buy up the individual mines, operate them under a company structure, and simply pay the miners a salary. This conflict between capitalism and honest manual labour becomes one of the most important themes of the work.
Read free book ยซThe Black Opal by Katharine Susannah Prichard (english novels to improve english TXT) ๐ยป - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Katharine Susannah Prichard
Read book online ยซThe Black Opal by Katharine Susannah Prichard (english novels to improve english TXT) ๐ยป. Author - Katharine Susannah Prichard
Voices were heard exclaiming with the light cadence and rhythm of joy. The crisis which had come near to shattering the Ridge scheme of things, and all that it stood for, had ended by drawing dissenting factions of the community into closer sympathy and more intimate relationship. In everybodyโs mind were the hope and enthusiasm of a new endeavour. As they went through the town again, neither Sophie nor Potch were conscious of them for the sorrow which had soaked into their lives. But these things were in the air they breathed, and sooner or later would claim them from all personal suffering; faith and loving service fill all their futureโ โthe long twilight of their days.
EndnotesDear name forever nursed in my memory thou shalt be,
For my heart first stirred to the delight of love for thee!
My thoughts and my desire will always be, dear name, toward thee,
And my last breath will be for thee, dear name.
โฉ
ColophonThe Black Opal
was published in 1921 by
Katharine Susannah Prichard.
Google
sponsored the production of this ebook for
Standard Ebooks.
It was produced by
David Grigg,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2011 by
Amy Sisson and Marc DโHooghe
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Fireโs On,
a painting completed in 1891 by
Arthur Streeton.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
March 21, 2021, 4:58 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/katharine-susannah-prichard/the-black-opal.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
UncopyrightMay you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
Copyright pages exist to tell you canโt do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S. public domain. The U.S. public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S. to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions.
Copyright laws are different around the world. If youโre not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook.
Non-authorship activities performed on public domain itemsโ โso-called โsweat of the browโ workโ โdonโt create a new copyright. That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks L3C, its contributors, and the contributors to this ebook release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work theyโve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesnโt change the copyright status of the underlying works, which, though believed to already be in the U.S. public domain, may not yet be in the public domain of other countries. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.
Comments (0)