Seven Poor Men of Sydney and For Love Alone can profitably be discussed together, not merely because they share an Australian setting, but because they have thematic concerns in common, and because the later book to some degree restates the themes of the earlier one, and offers a development from them. The Australian settings—mainly of Sydney—are emphasized in both, and sometimes seem a restriction when documentation becomes a substitute for creation…. Even for a Christina (Ellen) Stead 1902–1983 Photograph by Mark Gersonreader who knows Sydney, these passages hardly succeed; the need to create a mental map, to correlate names with street signs, dissipates the attention. To someone unfamiliar with the city, the details can only be boring. They are not at all evocative; they are supported by hardly any description or imaging. The streets and views may have been meaningful to Christina Stead, but nothing is...