Book Review. Paul Eggert. Biography of a book: Henry Lawson's While the billy boils. Paul Eggert (ed.). Henry Lawson: While the billy boils. The original newspaper versions.

This ia a review of a new scholarly edition by Professor Paul Eggert of Henry Lawson’s most famous collection of short stories While the Billy Boils, originally published by Angus and Robertson in 1896, supplemented by a monographic companion study, Biography of a Book, in which Eggert investigates the phases of production, distribution and reception of the book and meticulously traces the editorial and critical fortunes of the stories and sketches included in the collection, from their earliest single appearance in local colonial newspapers and magazines since the late 1880s, to the several 20thcentury editions and selections, until the latest commercial printings in the first decade of the present century.