FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE. By Marcus Clarke. Melbourne: Angus and Robertson.

Otago Witness, Issue 2389, 14 December 1899, Page 61

FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE. By Marcus Clarke. Melbourne: Angus and Robertson.

We have received from the publishers a copy of their new edition of Marcus Clarke's powerful novel, an edition which is absolutely excellent iv every respect. So widely known — at any rate, throughout Australasia. — i< "Th© Term of His Natural Life" that aay corament from us would Eurely be superfluous. It is a wonderful book, the most wonderful and terrible of it 3 kind that ever was written. No sensitive woman or imaginative girl should ever open its pages, so appalling is 'the realism of the record. The life story of an innocent man, convicted and condemned to penal servitude for life araong the very scum of the earth, under conditions and a system which now seem woll-nijjh incredible, cannot fail to be horrible, agonising-, haunting.

.Vtarcus Claike was a genius. His masterly drawing of the characters of Rufus Dawes, Frere, Christopher North, aud Sylvia will live for ever to prove it. Kis book never has had, never can have, a rival. In its terrible fascination, its haunting realism, "For the Term of His Natural Life" will for' ever stand alone. Let v.s/ be- thankful ,it should be cc — the giant cannibal Gabbett, the miserable "Moodier" — fiction could endure no repetition of them.