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The Text Publishing Company Pty Ltd
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22 William Street Melbourne Victoria 3000
Copyright © Helen Garner 1996
www.textpublishing.com.au

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published 1996 by The Text Publishing Company
This edition published 2008

Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press
Design by Susan Miller
Typeset by Midland Typesetters Australia

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Garner, Helen, 1942–
True stories : selected non-fiction / Helen Garner.

ISBN: 9781921351846 (pbk.)

Short stories.
Australian essays—20th century.
Australia—Social life and customs.
823.3

‘A Scrapbook, an Album’ first appeared in Sisters, ed. Drusilla Modjeska, HarperCollins, 1993, and is reproduced with the permission of the publisher. ‘Three Acres, More or Less’ first appeared in Gone Bush, ed. Roger McDonald, Transworld, 1990. ‘Cypresses and Spires’ first appeared as the introduction to The Last Days of Chez Nous & Two Friends, McPhee Gribble, 1992. Other pieces in this book, some of them in a different form, first appeared in the Age, Digger, Eureka Street, Independent Monthly, National Times, Scripsi, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney Papers, Sunday Age, Time, Times on Sunday, and Vashti’s Voice.