"101 in the Shade": Christmas Pudding in Australian popular and literary verse 1830–1900

Popular and literary Australian poetry throughout the nineteenth century dedicated to revering the Christmas pudding offered visions of this food form’s place within Victorian culture. What is unique about the enduring theme of the Christmas pudding in Australian popular, amateur, and literary verse of this period is the way in which the trope functioned as a motif through which poets attempted to inform, construct and re-envision Australian social life. While the literature on the relationship between the Christmas pudding, Empire, and colonization is extensive, relatively little critical work specifically concentrates attention on poetry generally, or Australian colonial poetry and poets of the nineteenth century specifically.