Bush Studies is famous for its stark realism - for not romanticising bush life, instead showing all its bleakness and harshness. Economic of style, this was influenced by the great 19th-century Russian novelists. Barbara Baynton's short-story collection unflinchingly presents the Australian bush as dangerous and isolating for the women who inhabit it. 'The terror Baynton evokes', Helen Garner writes in her introduction to the book, 'is elemental, sexual, unabashedly female.' Stories include, A Dreamer, Squeaker's Mate, Billy Skywonkie, Bush Church and The Chosen Vessel.