‘At last Australian drama has been born’, exclaimed a critic at the premiere of The Touch of Silk in 1928.

A poignant drama centred on Jeanne, a homesick French war bride and her shell-shocked husband battling hardship and prejudice in a drought-stricken Mallee town. Roland later revised the play, but the original version, which captures the period flavour of rural life in the 1920s, is published here.