AustLit

'Brian Penton, in his second novel Inheritors , depicts Brisbane of the late nineteenth century as a town obsessed by the need to conceal the misdeeds of its founders, and to perpetuate their lies.

'The scene is Queensland of the 'seventies and 'eighties of the last century, that most interesting period in Australian history when, "out of the wealth which the tough and sometimes dishonest pioneers had got together, the social graces were beginning to blossom." The major theme of the book is the conflict between this new age, struggling to be born, and the grim years preceding when success in this crude, untamed land could be won only by grim endurance, iron determination, and frequently by crime and violence.'

Sources: Buckridge, Patrick and Belinda McKay. By the Book: a literary history of Queensland. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2007.

Rev. of Inheritors, by Brian Penton. Illawarra Mercury 23 Oct 1936.