The Longing To Belong: Randolph Stow & the Birth Pangs of Literary Australia

The reclusive Australian writer Randolph Stow (1935-2010) lived a large part of his early life in Western Australia. Set in Australia, his early work explores the theme of the white settler in search of an Australian identity. The harshness of the outback denies any identification and the characters are largely defeated in their quest. Later, Stow chose to live in and write from Suffolk county, his ancestral home in England. This study analyses how the recurrent theme of identity crisis in Stow’s works is crucial to understanding the growth and maturity of Australian literature.