Corners of Melbourne

Beloved Melbourne historian Robyn Annear takes us on an unorthodox tour of the city's streets and corners, telling stories about the events and people that have made these the most interesting places to be.

What better defines a city than its street corners? A corner gives you a starting point, a destination, and a place to turn. It's furnished with pillar boxes, newsstands, tram stops, and lamp-posts for light and lounging. Where would you be likeliest to find a pub? At the corner, of course.

And who better than Robyn Annear to usher you around the corners of Melbourne and reveal their bizarre, baroque, and mostly forgotten stories?

In this (appropriately corner-shaped) book, she will introduce you to:

• street-corner 'galvanisers' who offered the thrill of electric shock at threepence a time
• the rude boys of the Fitzroy back streets who became the original 'larrikins'
• infants named for the corners on which they'd been abandoned
• a rogues' gallery of unruly women, incorrigible men, and runaway horses
• ...and, of course, the civic reprobates who discarded orange peel in the streets, to the risk of life and limb