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'The Central Highlands of Tasmania is an unlikely antipodes of Irish writing, but it is a region that has complex representations by exiled and immigrant Irish writers. The picturesque landscape of the Highlands in the Young Irelander John Mitchel’s Jail Journal (1856) is well known; less well known is the writing of William Moore Ferrar, born in Dublin in 1823 and who emigrated to New South Wales, then Van Diemen’s Land, as a free settler in 1843. His novel Artabanzanus: The Demon of the Great Lake: An Allegorical Romance of Tasmania: Arranged from the Diary of the Late Oliver Ubertus (1896) represents a vision of an ideal surface world and a hellish underground. Dedicated to Arthur James Balfour, and dramatising the issue of Irish home rule, Ferrar’s novel is an eccentric but multi-faceted instance of the Irish-Tasmanian imaginary.'
Source: Abstract.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
- Jail Journal; or, Five Years in British Prisons. Commenced on Board the Shearwater Steamer, in Dublin Bay, Continued at Spike Island—On Board the Scourge War Steamer—On Board the 'Dromedary' Hulk, Bermuda—On Board the Neptune Convict Ship—At Pernambuco—At the Cape of Good Hope (during the Anti-Convict Rebellion)—At Van Diemen’s Land—At Sydney—At Tahiti—At San Francisco—At Greytown—And Concluded at No. 3 Pier, North River, New York. 1854 single work autobiography prose
- Artabanzanus : The Demon of the Great Lake : An Allegorical Romance of Tasmania 1896 single work novel
- Tasmania,