The Country Schoolmaster : A Mystery in 88 Letters by Kate Grenville

FROM THE WOMEN'S PRIZE-WINNING, BOOKER-SHORTLISTED AUTHOR

'One of Australia's finest writers' Daily Telegraph

'Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness' Jay Parini

'I stood there holding the hundred-year-old letter with a feeling that was familiar from other archives, other bulging files of dog-eared paper. It was a blood-running-fast, itchy-palm, eyes-wide-open feeling of stumbling on something. A story . . .'

Rummaging around in the Archives one afternoon, Kate Grenville comes across an innocuous-looking file of letters about a schoolteacher in New South Wales. Intrigued, she keeps reading - and discovers a tale far more curious and complex than she ever could have imagined.

Contradictory perspectives on Joseph Connor are everywhere, and many of them eerily sinister. Was he savagely beating the students in his care? Or was he the victim of a small-town vendetta? And what went so terribly wrong between him and his daughter?

Grenville simply has to know: was Connor a victim, or a villain? Part colonial cold case, part dance of a writer's imagination, The Country Schoolmaster is a book like no other. In it, the novelist comes to understand the seductive pleasure of story-making, but also its dangerous limitations.

Format:Paperback / softback 256 pages
Publisher:Canongate Books
Imprint:Canongate Books
Edition:Main
ISBN:9781837268030
Published:22 Oct 2026
Classifications:True stories: discovery / historical / scientific
Weight:176g
Dimensions:198 x 128 x 18 (mm)