On Our Selection
by Steele Rudd 1868–1935
The book, and the century it came out of.
The Rudd family take up a selection in Queensland scrub and spend twenty years failing at it — drought, bark huts, one plough, a cow that dies, a crop that does not come. Steele Rudd was Arthur Hoey Davis, a selector’s son who wrote his own family’s losing struggle and made Dad and Dave into Australian household names. It is very funny, and the poverty underneath it is not a joke. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Roberts and McCubbin among them.
To You “Who Gave Our Country Birth;” to the memory of You whose names, whose giant enterprise, whose deeds of fortitude and daring were never engraved on tablet or tombstone; to You who strove through the silences of the Bush-lands and made them ours; to You who delved and toiled in loneliness through the years that…
On Our Selection, by Steele Rudd, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Comedy & Satire
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 128 pages
- Reading time
- about 3 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785486543005
60 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
On Our Selection, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Comedy & Satire shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785486543005, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of On Our Selection?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Steele Rudd's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 128 pages, which is roughly about 3 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
