The Generations of Men

Generations of Men is the pioneering story of the ancestors of Australia’s best-known poet, Judith Wright.

The names, dates and events are factual and are based on diaries, letters and personal reminiscences. Wright has taken this factual material and with her poet’s imagination turned it into a reconstruction of a past era; people, places and even moods.This is a beautifully written family history that documents not only the settling of Wright’s own family into New South Wales’ last century, but also the life of a nation, as Australia was colonised by ‘generations of men’ unsuited in many ways to the historical and geographical context of their new environment. For many years unavailable, Judith Wright’s elegant chronicle is fascinating both as a historical document and a personal meditation.