This is a book that will not appeal to everyone. But if you have an interest in 18th and 19th century Australia, then this book will pique your interest. The intention of the authors is to examine the influence of early Australian history on the fiction of the time. This vast undiscovered continent would provide the background to many pieces of fiction based on exploration, convict stories, bushrangers, castaways, and ocean voyages. Underlining this examination is an understanding of the role of colonisation and the picture of Indigenous peoples through the lens of prejudice and perceived superiority.
The authors start by examining the logs and journals of the early explorers such as Cook, Dampier and Banks and then links them to the fiction that were inspired by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Swifts Gulliver’s Travels. In these stories fictional travellers experience interrupted journeys, attacks by sea monsters, pirates and Indigenous peoples usually overcoming these obstacles and returning home. In fact, both those books provided template for many of the novels, from being marooned and surrounded by ‘natives’ to finding developed societies along the vast inland sea located in central Australia.
What makes this book interesting is the way the authors have used real events such as the crossing of the Blue Mountains as the background to the works of fiction, shedding insight on how Australia was viewed from afar.
This is a relatively short book at 181 pages, but it packs in a great deal of information and could serve as a springboard into our own examination of Australia both real and fictional.
Reviewed by Anthony Llewellyn-Evans
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ken Gelder is an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Melbourne. His books include Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (1998, with Jane M Jacobs), Popular Fiction: The Logics and Practices of a Literary Field (2004), Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007), After the Celebration: Australian Fiction 1989–2007 (2009, with Paul Salzman) and, with Rachael Weaver, Colonial Australian Fiction (2017) and The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt (2020).
Rachael Weaver is an ARC Future Fellow in English at the University of Tasmania and a 2024 Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales. She is the author of The Criminal of the Century (2006) and, with Ken Gelder, The Colonial Journals, and the emergence of Australian literary culture (2014), Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy (2017), and The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt (2020).
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