'In the late 1800s, rather than run the risk of his under-achieving sons tarnishing his reputation at home, Charles Dickens sent two of them to Australia.
'The tenth child of Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn, had consistently proved unable ‘to apply himself ’ to school or life. So aged sixteen, he is sent, as his brother Alfred was before him, to Australia.
'Plorn arrives in Melbourne in late 1868 carrying a terrible secret. He has never read a word of his father’s work. He is sent out to a 2000-square-mile station in remotest New South Wales to learn to become a man, and a gentleman stockman, from the most diverse and toughest of companions. In the outback he becomes enmeshed with Paakantji, colonists, colonial-born, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women.
'Plorn, unexpectedly, encounters the same veneration of his father and familiarity with Dickens’ work in Australia as was rampant in England. Against this backdrop, and featuring cricket tournaments, horse-racing, bushrangers, sheep droving, shifty stock and station agents, frontier wars and first encounters with Australian women, Plorn meets extraordinary people and enjoys wonderful adventures as he works to prove himself.
'This is Tom Keneally in his most familiar terrain. Taking historical figures and events and reimagining them with verve, compassion and humour. It is a triumph.'(Publication summary)
A brief review of this work appeared in The New York Times May 27, 2022
'Authors of fiction draw on their lives and relationships to mimic the look, touch, and feel of real human experience—so much so that a person who has lived in proximity to an author, maybe as a lover or friend or child, can sometimes find an unexpected and embarrassing audit of their own faults, abilities, and shortcomings in the author's prose. It is an uncomfortable and seldomdiscussed consequence of creating art that so closely parallels lived reality: that real people tend to recognize themselves in it. In many ways, this premise is what propels the plot of Thomas Keneally's 2020 book The Dickens Boy , a work of historical fiction that reimagines the youngest son of the literary icon Charles Dickens and his adventures through the Australian Outback.' (Introduction)
'Being Charles Dickens’s youngest son would have been hard work, as Tom Keneally tells Stephen Romei'
'When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.’ That gunshot of a quotation comes from the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. I suspect he means writers are traitors to biology – they have higher allegiances than blood ties. Art is their true spouse; their works are the favoured first-born.' (Introduction)
'Throughout the 19th century it was common practice for well-to-do British families to dispose of their more debauched, debt-prone or dissipated scions by sending them off to the colonies. A typical specimen was Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn, the youngest and most hapless of Charles and Catherine’s 10 children. Having failed to distinguish himself in anything more elevated than the interpretation of cricket scorecards, Plorn was peremptorily dispatched to the Australian outback, which his famous father believed would induce him to focus his energies and efforts. He was not even 16 when he disembarked in Melbourne in 1868.' (Introduction)
'Throughout the 19th century it was common practice for well-to-do British families to dispose of their more debauched, debt-prone or dissipated scions by sending them off to the colonies. A typical specimen was Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn, the youngest and most hapless of Charles and Catherine’s 10 children. Having failed to distinguish himself in anything more elevated than the interpretation of cricket scorecards, Plorn was peremptorily dispatched to the Australian outback, which his famous father believed would induce him to focus his energies and efforts. He was not even 16 when he disembarked in Melbourne in 1868.' (Introduction)
'When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.’ That gunshot of a quotation comes from the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz. I suspect he means writers are traitors to biology – they have higher allegiances than blood ties. Art is their true spouse; their works are the favoured first-born.' (Introduction)
'Being Charles Dickens’s youngest son would have been hard work, as Tom Keneally tells Stephen Romei'
'Authors of fiction draw on their lives and relationships to mimic the look, touch, and feel of real human experience—so much so that a person who has lived in proximity to an author, maybe as a lover or friend or child, can sometimes find an unexpected and embarrassing audit of their own faults, abilities, and shortcomings in the author's prose. It is an uncomfortable and seldomdiscussed consequence of creating art that so closely parallels lived reality: that real people tend to recognize themselves in it. In many ways, this premise is what propels the plot of Thomas Keneally's 2020 book The Dickens Boy , a work of historical fiction that reimagines the youngest son of the literary icon Charles Dickens and his adventures through the Australian Outback.' (Introduction)
