Overview
"It 'contains more married love to the square inch than anything I ever read,' wrote E. V. Lucas when Doreen was first published in 1917. In it we find The Bloke, now happily married for six years, being gently nagged, arguing, making up, scolding his son for fighting – '"You show yet Mar that eye uv yours, I'm 'shamed uv you!" I lied' – and finally being nursed during a spell of 'sciatiker' by the ever-patient Doreen.
"Following the outstanding success of The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915) and The Moods of Ginger Mick (1916), Dennis wrote Doreen to serve as a Christmas gift. Despite its being a critical and popular success (100,000 copies were printed in 1917) it was not republished until 1981.
"Hal Gye's illustrations as always perfectly complement and complete the work. He has clipped the wings of his larrikin-cupids, and here presents Doreen and The Bloke as properly befits 'a man about the house' and his 'dinkum woman' – earthbound (though still dreaming).
When a bloke gits on to dreamin' uv the old days an' Doreen –
The days I thort I snared a saint; but since I've understood
I 'ave wed a dinkum woman, which is fifty times as good.
From the Angus & Robertson Booklet edition, 1917.
Contents
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