| Below and On Top | |
| Author: | Edward Dyson |
| Country: | Australia |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Short story collection |
| Publisher: | George Robertson |
| Release Date: | 1898 |
| Media Type: | |
| Pages: | 327 pp |
| Preceded By: | Rhymes from the Mines and Other Lines |
| Followed By: | Fact'ry 'ands |
Below and On Top (1898) is a collection of short stories by Australian writer Edward Dyson. It was published by George Robertson publishers in 1898.[1]
The collection includes 24 stories by the author, from a variety of original sources; mainly The Bulletin, The Argus, Melbourne Punch, The Antipodean and Cosmos. The title story, "Below and On Top", was published for the first time in this edition.
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A writer in The Herald stated: "Mr Dyson has unquestionably the happy knack of describing in crisp and attractive style the scenes of daily life in tlie bush and in the township. His pictures are those we see around us every day, and yet through the medium of his pen we can while away many an hour looking at them again."[2]
Writing about the book in a piece in 1954 for The Bulletin magazine Norman Lindsay noted: "Much of the best literature springs from a lack of literary consciousness, and Below and On Top is from that genesis. It was written shortly after Dyson had left the life of a working miner to make a living as a writer...As is inevitable with a young writer, some of the stories in Below and On Top are of unequal quality. If I were making a selection, I would pass the 'Dick Haddon' boy-stories. They generate, I suspect, from Tom Sawyer...The lasting quality of Below and On Top is in the mining stories, headed by 'The Golden Shanty,' which would be a classic in whatever country it was written."[3]
After the book's initial publication on Melbourne in 1898[4] it was not until 2004 that it was reprinted by the Sydney University Press.[5]