Writer, columnist, dramatist.
David Burn initially pursued a career in the British navy, but this was cut short due to prolonged ill health. In 1826, he followed his mother to Hobart, arriving in May with his daughter, Jemima Frances (an infant son died on the voyage). His wife, Frances Maria (née Eldred), remained in Scotland. Burn's application for a land grant failed when he claimed assets that belonged to his mother, and he subsequently returned to Edinburgh in 1829. The following year, he divorced his wife and returned to Hobart where he purchased for £180 a 500-acre property (202 ha) called Rotherwood. Situated near the River Ouse in the district of New Norfolk, the land had previously been owned by Dr (Sir) Robert Officer. It was at New Norfolk on 6 November 1832 that he married Catherine, third daughter of Michael Fenton of Castle Town, County Sligo.
Burn went back to the United Kingdom in 1836 with his mother, establishing himself initially in England. In 1840, he addressed the Colonial Society Club, London, strongly urging the need for representative government in the colony, and contributed a series of 'Sketches of Van Diemen's Land' to the Colonial Magazine (1840-41). In November of the following year, he returned to Rotherwood and became active in such local affairs as the newly formed Chamber of Commerce. His aspirations for the colonists were reaffirmed in his pamphlet Vindication of Van Diemen's Land in A Cursory Glance at Her Colonists as They Are, Not as They Have Been Represented To Be (London, 1840).
In 1842, Burn accompanied Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin on their expedition to the west coast of Tasmania, which he described in his Narrative of the Overland Journey of Sir John and Lady Franklin and Party from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour, 1842 (first published in 1843). Two years later, he and his mother became insolvent. Around the same time Burn became embroiled in a law suit when the brother of his second wife, Michael Fenton, sought to protect her property from him. At one stage, Fenton challenged the legality of Burn's Scottish divorce from his first wife. In 1845, Burn left Tasmania for New South Wales, remaining there for a little over a year. During his time in Sydney, two of his dramas, The Queen's Love and The First Lieutenant were staged at the Royal Victoria Theatre (1845). Burn migrated to New Zealand in 1847, settling in Auckland, where he later edited the Maori Messenger (1849, 1855-1863) and the New Zealand Herald (1864-1865).
Burn retired in 1865 and died on 14 June 1875 at Auckland, aged 76. In his youth, he was associated with some English playwrights and acquired some talent as an actor and a writer. Although his collection of Plays and Fugitive Pieces in Verse (1842) is generally considered to contain little in the way of literary quality, his three-act play The Bushrangers is historically significant in that it was the first drama 'to be written out of a direct experience of Australian life' (Margaret Williams, Australia on the Popular Stage, p.3). Although written and first performed in 1829 (at the Caledonian Theatre, Edinburgh, on 8 and 10 September), the play was not staged in Australia until 1971. Burn also collaborated with composer Isaac Nathan (q.v.) to write the song 'Sir Wilfred' (from the romantic drama The Queen's Love, ca. 1844). Among other manuscripts and publications attributed to Burn is An Excursion to Port Arthur in 1842.
