Where the Line Breaks

Michael Burrows

• Publisher: Fremantle Press
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781925816358
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

The Unknown Digger is Australia's answer to famous First World War poets, Brooke, Sassoon. But for decades, his identity has remained a mystery. Matthew Denton – Australian PhD student at University College, London – believes the unknown poet is one of Australia's greatest war heroes: Lieutenant Alan Lewis VC of the 10th Light Horse. Matt is starry-eyed and in love with Emily, a fellow student and assistant to Matt's supervisor, the nattily dressed Professor Alistair Fitzwilliam-Harding. But, as the footnotes to Matt's thesis reveal, not all is fair in love and war. Meanwhile, Alan Lewis, recently engaged to Rose Porter – fights his way across the Middle East as part of the 10th Light Horse, the vision of the life he left behind disappearing, and the question of what makes a poet, a lover and a hero growing more ill-defined with every battle fought.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: The discovery of the Unknown Digger poems, and their cultural importance within the prevailing Australian literary landscape
• Chapter 1: An examination of the circumstantial evidence for the authorship of the poems by Lieutenant Alan Lewis: Primary sources from Lewis’s movements through 1915–18 and the Unknown Digger poems
• Chapter 2: An analysis of the material evidence strongly indicating Alan Lewis’s authorship of the poems: Lewis’s wartime writings as primary sources for objective comparison
• Chapter 3: Ideological similarities in the poetry of the Unknown Digger as evidence for Lewis’s authorship: How Lewis’s service history and moral code compare and contrast with the Unknown Digger
• Chapter 4: Examining the previously unexplored implications of a potential Alan Lewis authorship on the Unknown Digger poems: The Lemnos poems and their potential to change everything we think we know
• Chapter 5: Further original evidence from the campaign in the Middle East demonstrating an Alan Lewis authorship of the Unknown Digger poems: The Lost Years as a source for contiguous postulation
• Chapter 6: Conclusive evidence and analysis of the primary sources and secondary confirmation
• Conclusion: Final thoughts on the legitimacy of Alan Lewis’s legacy, the importance of a unified theory of authorship, and acknowledgements
• Copyright