[1] His father, Samuel Furphy, was originally a tenant farmer from Tandragee, County Armagh, Ireland, who emigrated to Australia in c. 1840-1841.

In about 1850 the family moved to Kangaroo Ground, Victoria,[1] and here the parents of the district built a school and obtained a master.

[1] "I have just finished writing a full-sized novel; title, Such is Life; the scene, Riverina and northern Vic; temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian."

[2] Later works were published under the pseudonym 'Tom Collins' which may have come from the slang term meaning "a fellow about town whom many sought to kill for touching them on 'sore points'".

[1] Stephens persuaded the proprietors of The Bulletin to publish the revised Such Is Life because it was a great Australian work although not commercially viable.

[7] He expanded and remodelled the chapter to form Rigby's Romance, which was serialised in The Barrier Truth from 27 October 1905 to 20 July 1906.

[8] After moving to Western Australia in 1905, Furphy commenced work on revising the original second chapter, which he titled The Lyre Bird and the Native Companion before retitling it The Buln-Buln and the Brolga.

Such is Life has been described as Australia's Moby Dick because, like Melville's book, it was neglected for thirty or forty years before being discovered as a classic.

The historian Stuart MacIntyre has said the book challenged the assumption that "nothing of significance ever happened" in Australia or that Australians lacked "creative originality".