Physical description

Hard cover book. Ginger Murdoch
Author: William Hatfield
Publisher: Angus & Robertson
Date: 1932
Further Information: Dark Blue plain cloth hardcover with lettering and patterning to spine in white. The spine has a Library label with an inscription.

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on spine with typed text PAT FIC HAT
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service
Front loose end paper has a stamp from Corangamite Regional Library Service

Summary

Ginger Murdoch is a novel built around a recurring bush character of Hatfield's, which had already been running as a series of short stories in The Sydney Mail from 1931 onward. It's about a hard-drinking bushman named Ginger Murdoch. The stories (titles like 'Ginger Murdoch: Horse Dealer', 'Ginger Murdoch, Publican', 'Ginger Murdoch–Outlaw', 'Ginger Murdoch: Squatter') cast him as a knockabout outback figure a horse-dealer, publican, 'knight errant', squatter moving through the kind of droving, station and bush-town life Hatfield knew first-hand. The 1932 Angus & Robertson first edition ran to 268 pages, and the dust-jacket art shows Ginger Murdoch on horseback, exploring the countryside consistent with a picaresque, episodic outback adventure rather than a tightly plotted single narrative.