AustLit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

Born in Derbyshire, William Howitt (1792-1879), was a well-known writer, poet and Quaker; his younger brothers were writer and traveller Richard Howitt and physician and natural scientist Godfrey Howitt, and his wife was poet and writer Mary Howitt. After residences in Europe, William travelled with two of his sons, including future ethnographer Alfred William Howitt, to Victoria, where his brother Godfrey resided. William and his sons spent approximately two years in the Victorian goldfields, resulting in a number of publications including A Boy's Adventures in the Wilds of Australia (1855), Land, Labour, and Gold (1855), Two Years in Victoria with Visits to Sydney and Van Diemen's Land (1860) and Life in Victoria (1860). In his preface to the current work, Tallangetta, the Squatter's Home, Howitt stated that it was intended as a more comprehensive depiction of Australian life and character than that portrayed in his Two Years in Victoria (1860). In his casual description of station life, travel and discussions of emigration, Howitt observed that the reader may be surprised at the characters that figure in the Australian bush and cities.