AustLit

Charlotte Badger is widely known as the first white woman to live in New Zealand, after taking part in a mutiny following a flogging on board a civilian cargo ship.

However, research by Elsbeth Hardie suggests that much of what we know about Badger was invented by nineteenth and early twentieth-century Australian novelists, including Louis Becke, and that the increasing availability of early newspapers make the facts of her life more accessible.