ABSTRACT
On 3 December 1928, near the end of his life, Lawrence, in declining a request from Mollie Skinner for assistance with another of her novels, “Eve in the Land of Nod,” explained his rejection, in part, on the grounds of his unfamiliarity with Australian Aborigines, 1 stating that he “never saw a black boy except in the streets of Sydney” (vii. 36). Lawrence’s caveat suggests that a search for an Aboriginal presence in his work will be fruitless, or at best yield slim pickings. Lawrence’s reply, however, was in essence a half-truth. He had encountered Australian Aborigines through his reading of anthropology and two works of fiction, which stimulated Lawrence to create the Aboriginal character Dr Alexander Graham in The Lost Girl and evoke a subtle Australian Aboriginal presence in Kangaroo and The Boy in the Bush.
