Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of theCommonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, its literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers (including modern Indigenous Australians as well as Anglo-Celtic and multicultural migrant Australians) has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature - exploring such themes asAboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, migrant and national identity, distance from other Western nations and proximity to Asia, the complexities of urban living and the "beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
Among the first true works of literature produced in Australia were the accounts of the settlement of Sydney by Watkin Tench, a captain of the marines on theFirst Fleet to arrive in 1788.Watkin Tench (6 October 1758 – 7 May 1833) was a British marine officer who is best known for publishing two books describing his experiences in the First Fleet, which established the first settlement in Australia in 1788. His two accounts, "Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay" and "Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson" provide an account of the arrival and first four years of the colony.[1] Little is known of Tench apart from what he writes in his three books and his service record.
John White (1826–1891) was an English public servant and ethnographer in New Zealand, known for his work on the history and traditions of the Māori people.
Life[edit]
Son of Francis White, he was born in England, and went out to New Zealand with his father in 1832, settling first atKororāreka. It was sacked by the Māori forces at the beginning of the Flagstaff War in 1845, and the family moved toAuckland.[1]
White was employed by the government in positions where he came much into contact with the Māori people. Subsequently he was gold commissioner at Coromandel, and was appointed official interpreter and agent for the purchase of lands; he succeeded in obtaining for the colonists the title to most of the land round Auckland.[1]
Later White became magistrate of Central Whanganui. He died suddenly at Auckland on 13 January 1891.[1]
White was employed by the government of New Zealand to compile a complete history of the Māori traditions; he had completed six volumes at the time of his death.[2] They appeared in 1889 with the title The Ancient History of the Maori (Wellington). He was also author of a novelette, entitled Te Rou, Or, The Māori at Home (1874).[1][3]
Anna Maria Bunn (1808–1889) was the anonymous author of The Guardian: a Tale (by an Australian) (1838),[1] the first novel published on mainland Australia and the first in the continent by a woman.[2] Bunn’s authorship was only established after an historian found a copy of the book in which her son had noted his mother’s authorship.
Life[edit]
Anna Maria Murray was born in Ireland and in 1827 came to Australia with her father, who, as a retired army officer, was entitled to a free land grant in New South Wales. Her brother Terence Aubrey Murray also came out, while her brother James remained behind until he had finished training as a surgeon. A year later she married Captain George Bunn, a mariner and merchant, a brother of the English theatrical manager Alfred Bunn.[4] They settled in Pyrmont in Sydney. Captain Bunn died suddenly on 9 January 1834, aged 43, leaving Anna Maria aged 25 years, with two small sons and in financial difficulties.[5] It was in the five years after her husband’s death that she wrote the novel. In this time she alternated between living with her brother James, who owned Woden homestead and her brother Terence, who ownedYarralumla homestead, both in the area of present day Canberra. She had planned to return to Ireland, but this became impractical.[6] In 1852 she moved to live at St Omer in the Braidwood district a property of which had been owned by Captain Bunn but which the couple had never occupied.[7] In 1860 her youngest son died from a fall from a horse, and five years later his wife and son died of typhoid fever, leaving a daughter Georgiana who was raised by Anna Maria.[8]Bunn apparently wrote nothing else apart from her novel, but she did produce paintings of insects and flowers which are in the collection of the National Library of Australia.[9] She died at St Omer on 19 September 1889. Her grave is in the Braidwood General Cemetery.[10]
Novel[edit]
The novel is a competent work that mixes the apparently incongruous modes of the Gothic novel and the comedy of manners.[11] The setting is England and Ireland, with New South Wales only referred to at times in the text, mostly in amusingly disparaging terms.[12] It is written partly in the form of letters between two former school friends and partly inthird person narrative, typical of transitional novels of the time.[13] Themes include the search for security, the issue of whether to marry for love (the author appears to vote against it) and the ups and downs of marriage.[14] However, these are expressed within a melodramatic gothic plot culminating in infanticide and suicide.[15] The author does not seem particularly comfortable with the Gothic sensibility.[16] Dale Spender points out that although the plot includes the eventual discovery of an incestuous secret (husband and wife discover that they are also brother and sister) the author seems disconcertingly (for a gothic novel) blasé about this turn of affairs, and regards such a situation as simply unfortunate rather than a shocking sin which will be punished.[
