As we celebrate the Federation it is timely to reappraise the decade that produced our nation. A watershed period in Australian literature, the 1890s saw the emergence of a diverse set of social, cultural and political movements - feminist, labor, liberal, civic, imperial loyalist, regional, nationalist, professional, aesthetic - which gave scope and structure to an extraordinary variety of writing careers. Grouping selections of poetry, short fiction and novel extracts in six sections: Histories and Futures, Home and Away, Love and Other Catastrophes, Work and Play, Civilisation and its Discontents, and Art and Society, this rich new anthology showcases the diversity of form and content of the 1890s.