Redheap (First Australian Edition)

Norman Lindsay’s first novel, banned in Australia for twenty-eight years and here in its first Australian edition.

Redheap was first published in London by Faber and Faber in 1930, and in the United States as Every Mother’s Son. It is set in a country town in Victoria in the 1890s and follows Robert Piper, a nineteen-year-old caught between the publican’s daughter and the parson’s daughter next door, and a family bound by snobbery and respectability. Its Australian reception was swift. Complaints from Victorian residents, who believed the characters were based on real people, led to a ban in 1930, making it the first Australian novel to be banned there. The ban was not lifted until 1958. Ure Smith’s edition of 1959 was therefore the first time the book could be freely sold in the country of its setting. It is the first novel of a trilogy that continues in Saturdee and Halfway to Anywhere, and it was adapted by the ABC as a television series in 1972.

First Australian edition. Small octavo, 316pp. Original red cloth boards in the original pictorial dust jacket, unclipped and priced 21s. A near fine copy, generally clean and bright throughout, with remnant adhesive marks to the lower faces of the dust jacket, as well as to the front and rear endpapers. In a very good dust jacket, a little chipped and worn at the extremities, with some small creases to the faces.

Not currently on display in store. For viewing or more information, please contact: rarebooks@harryhartog.com.au

Catalogue Number: HH000935