By the Book

Book excerpt: "By the Book is an indispensable history of the literature of Queensland from its establishment as a separate colony in the mid-nineteenth century through major economic, political and cultural transformations to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Queensland figures in the Australian imagination as a frontier, a place of wild landscapes and wilder politics, but also as Australia's playground, a soft tourist paradise of warm weather and golden beaches. Based partly on real historical divergences from the rest of Australia, these contradictory images have been questioned and scrutini.