In this first extended study of Austrlaian short fiction, Bruce Bennett adopts Christina Stead's metaphor of an 'ocean of story' to suggest the universality of storytelling, and the marks it leaves for posterity.Chapters look at writers and movements within a chronological span, beginning with the unquiet spirits of the nineteenth century, and proceeding through the 'masculine ascendancy' of the "Bulletin" men and Henry Lawson, to the 'alternative traditions' from 1880 to 1930 of a range of women writers, of Steele Rudd, and others writing of war, travel and the immigrant experience. A chapter on 'local loyalties and modernist impulses' covers 1930 to 1950, 'politics and storytelling' the decades from 1950 to 1970, and 'days of wine, rage and the little dance' the 1970s. 'Home and away' studies writing from the 1980s to the present, and 'states of the art' looks at preoccupations and challenges in sub-genres such as crime and science fiction.