author
Joseph Furphy
1843–1912
Best known for Such Is Life, he helped shape the sound of Australian fiction with sharp bush detail, dry humor, and a voice unlike anyone else’s. Writing mostly as "Tom Collins," he turned the life of working people into something lively, thoughtful, and enduring.
1 Audiobook
Such Is Life
by Joseph Furphy
About the author
Born in Victoria, Australia, on September 26, 1843, Joseph Furphy was the son of Irish immigrants and was educated partly at home, where he encountered the Bible and Shakespeare early. He worked as a farmer, bullock driver, and blacksmith, and that practical working life fed directly into his writing.
Furphy published mostly under the pseudonym Tom Collins and is remembered above all for Such Is Life (1903), a novel now widely regarded as an Australian classic. Its mix of bush storytelling, talkative humor, and big philosophical digressions made it unusual in its own time and influential later on.
He spent his later years in Western Australia and died in Claremont on September 13, 1912. What keeps his work fresh is the way it brings everyday colonial life onto the page without smoothing out its rough edges or its contradictions.