Although he disliked Christmas stories, the famous Victorian novelist and writer Anthony Trollope wrote Harry Heathcote of Gangoil: A Tale of Australian Bush Life in 1874 for the Christmas issue of a London magazine. The novella centers on the character of Harry Heathcote, an English farmer who manages a sheep-raising ranch on 120, 000 acres leased by the Crown. The ranch where Heathcote lives with his wife, his two children and his sister-in-law is located in Queensland, Australia. The readers learn that Heathcote’s main concern is to protect his land and sheep not only from accidental fires, but also from malevolent arsonists. Due to his unfriendly and strange temper, he is always in bad terms with some of his workers and mainly with his next-door neighbor, Mr. Giles Medlicot. Their relationship becomes even more complicated when Medlicot develops a romantic relationship with Heathcote’s sister-in-law. Later, a violent feud takes place between Heathcote and the Brownbies, an unruly neighboring family who tried to burn the entire range. Medlicot decides to help Heathcote and they both succeed in controlling the fire and in vanquishing the Brownbies in a pitched battle. Trollope’s novella ends happily with a romantic Christmas dinner scene.
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