AustLit

'By setting, by date of publication, and the residence of the author, Quintus Servinton is rightly regarded as Australia's first novel. Printed in Hobart Town in three volumes, in 1830-1, and expressly intended for dispatch to England (where it was re-issued in London in 1832), only a few copies were reserved for sale in Tasmania. Of these, only three are known to survive, and the book has long been inaccessible to any but the most persistent of readers.'

'It presents an invaluable and fascinating picture - first of English provincial life and of contemporary business dealing, and then of convict life as experienced by an educated convict, a contrast and complement to the Ralph Rashleigh picture of the convict of humble birth and little or no education crushed by brutality and manual labour.'

'In his introduction, Cecil Hadgraft traces the author's own chequered career - an amazing sequence of misfortunes and miscalculations both before and after his twenty-four hour reprieve from the gallows, and particularly significant for the assessment and appreciation of a novel known to be largely autobiographical.' (Source: Online)

'Emily Bethal is dying. The doctors give her two years at best. It will be two years of increasing pain and dependence. It is probably the dependence that Emily fears the most. She is independent, spirited and wilful. She has strong opinions and she knows the way the world works ... but she also knows how it should work. Is the deal worth it? Yes, she will avoid the two years of suffering and has traded it for for one week of living in the future. And the future she will see? The bright shiny wonderful and miraculous world of 1988. Yes 100 years into her own future takes her back to our recent past. See the wonders that Emily sees as she experiences a world that she just knows must exist for the betterment of all man ... and womankind.'

Source: 2010 Chimaera edition

In 1902 Jeannie Gunn, a Melbourne schoolteacher, went with her new husband to live on the remote Elsey cattle station near the Roper River in the Northern Territory. Although she spent little more than a year there, her experiences in the outback and her contact with the local Aboriginal people impressed her deeply, and on her return to Melbourne she set down her recollections in two books, We of the Never Never and The Little Black Princess.