Seven Little Australians
Seven children in a military family near Sydney decide to see what happens if they misbehave, and the novel follows the consequences with a mixture of comedy and real danger. Ethel Turner wrote it in her early twenties and it became one of the most popular Australian books ever published.
It is a children's book that does not sentimentalise childhood: the children are often unkind, the parents are distracted, and the ending is genuinely sad. The picture of middle-class Sydney in the 1890s is detailed and unsentimental, which is why adults still read it.
Public-domain status
First published in 1894. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Ethel Turner died in 1958, so the work enters the public domain there in 2029. Check the law where you live before reusing a modern edition, introduction or translation.
Read the text free
- Project Gutenberg, ebook no. 4731 — plain text, EPUB and Kindle, checked by us
- Internet Archive — scanned editions and free audiobooks
- Open Library — edition history and borrowable copies
Keep reading
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll, 1865
- The Jungle Book — Rudyard Kipling, 1894
- My Brilliant Career — Miles Franklin, 1901
- Peter and Wendy — J. M. Barrie, 1911
- Sydney — the city behind the books
- Reading lists — 19 ways through the collection
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