''The Young Desire It'' (1937) is a novel by

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n author Seaforth Mackenzie. It won the

ALS Gold Medal The Australian Literature Society Gold Medal (ALS Gold Medal) is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for "an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year." From 1928 to 1974 it was awarded by the ...

for Best Novel in 1937.

Plot summary

The novel details a year in the life of its teenage protagonist Charles Fox. He has left his idyllic life on an isolated

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

n farm for boarding school. There he suffers the bullying of his fellow students, uncomfortable advances from his schoolmaster and a difficult scholastic workload.

Notes

* Dedication: To W.G.C. * Epigraph: "...To be free to choose is not enough. Though the young desire it, they cannot use that freedom, but must be forced into the decision of choice by good or evil circumstances which while they can perceive them they cannot control..." (Michael Paul: ''The Anatomy of Failure''). * In his foreword to the novel, first included in the 1963 edition, Douglas Stewart says: "Mackenzie told me that he had invented the author, "Michael Paul", and the quotation from Michael Paul's alleged writings from which he had taken his title. He was always amused that none of his critics had spotted this harmless little hoax..."

Reviews

* Writing at the time of the book's original publication, a reviewer in Brisbane's ''Sunday Mail'' wrote: "Writing of rare fineness and delicacy immediately is apparent in this, the first novel of a young Australian...''The Young Desire It'' defies brief description. With all the fine perceptions of the author, the novel is baffling, unsatisfying, vague, yet stamped with a certain genius that might, with more manageable material, produce a memorable work." * The novel was reprinted in 2013 as a part of the

Text Publishing Text Publishing is an independent Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Melbourne, Victoria. Company background Text Media was founded in Melbourne in 1990 by Diana Gribble and Eric Beecher, along with designer Chong Weng ...

Text Classics series. Alex Cothren reviewed this edition for ''Transnational Literature'': "These are the bare bones of a coming-of-age narrative, but from them Mackenzie fashions a wholly muscular, hot-blooded portrait of a young man; a psychological profile so precise that every shift in Charles' mood carries the tension of a thriller. It is amongst the best written in the genre, a true Australian classic whose power has not diminished over the generations."

Awards and nominations

* 1937 winner

Editions

* The First edition was published by Cape in 1937. * Re-print with

Angus and Robertson Angus & Robertson (A&R) is a major Australian bookseller, publisher and printer. As book publishers, A&R has contributed substantially to the promotion and development of Australian literature.Alison, Jennifer (2001). "Publishers and editors: A ...

in 1963 * 2013 a new re-set edition was published by Text with an introduction by

David Malouf David George Joseph Malouf AO (; born 20 March 1934) is an Australian poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright and librettist. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2008, Malouf has lectured at both the University of Quee ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Young Desire It, The 1937 Australian novels ALS Gold Medal winning works Novels set in Western Australia Novels set in boarding schools 1937 debut novels Jonathan Cape books