White Topee
{{Short description|1954 novel set in Victoria, Australia}}
{{Use Australian English|date=September 2016}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2016}}
{{Infobox book |
| name = White Topee
| title_orig =
| translator =
| image = File:White Topee.jpg
| caption = First edition
| author = Eve Langley
| illustrator =
| cover_artist =
| country = Australia
| language = English
| series =
| genre = Literary fiction
| publisher = Angus and Robertson
| release_date = 1954
| english_release_date =
| media_type = Print
| pages = 250 pp
| isbn =
| oclc =
| preceded_by = The Pea-Pickers
| followed_by = –
}}
White Topee (1954) is a novel by Australian writer Eve Langley.[http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C217098 Austlit - White Topee by Eve Langley]
Plot summary
The novel is set in Gippsland, Victoria, which is depicted as an idyllic place with peoples from many nations working on the land in harmony. The novel is a sequel of sorts to the author's earlier book The Pea-Pickers, and features the same characters two years later.
Critical reception
Peter Harding, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, found the novel "is, more than anything else, a poem. Plain prose and formal verse intersperse many of its 250 pages, but much of it is a poem disguised as prose. The poem is about Australia and Italians, and about a poet's ecstatic, anguished memories of youth in Gippsland and probably somewhere in northern Australia. And in reading it one is in the presence of something great amid a rambling eccentricity."[http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article18423659 "The Burning Red Log" by Peter G. Harding, The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 August 1954, p11]
Peggy Wright was impressed with the novel in The News (Adelaide): "It is impossible to be lukewarm about Eve Langley. Either you lap up her strikingly original prose, or you wonder what the heck she's writing about. Personally, I can take all Eve Langley likes to write, and come back for more...The book is packed with lively characters music-loving Italians, and casual Australians, university graduates and laborers. Every page is rich with a sincere, almost passionate love of Australia."[http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article134753657 "Her Prose is Striking" by Peggy Wright, The News, 29 July 1954, p23]
See also
References
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Category:1954 Australian novels