Tales of the Early Days (1894) is a collection of historical tales primarily concerned with the social abuses of the convict system of early Australia, such as 'Secret Society of the Ring', set in the penal colony of Norfolk Island. Warung's stories are filled with imaginative truth and 'symbolic veracity', though he draws on documentary fact and social realism. This new edition of Tales of the Early Days, with an introduction by Laurie Hergenhan, is a part of the Australian Classics Library series intended to make classic texts of Australian literature more widely available for the secondary school and undergraduate university classroom, and to the general reader. The series is co-edited by Emeritus Professor Bruce Bennett of the University of New South Wales and Professor Robert Dixon, Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, in conjunction with SETIS, Sydney University Press, AustLit and the Copyright Agency Limited. Each text is accompanied by a fresh scholarly introduction and a basic editorial apparatus drawn from the resources of AustLit.
