Cirrus@Austlit

Nineteenth-Century Travel Writing

William Stamer, (otherwise known as Mark Tapley, Junior) surveyed a variety of colonies, chiefly Canada and the United States. The concluding chapter details Australia, providing an interesting comparative perspective on emigration. Stamer endeavoured to "give the reader a truthful description of the life led by the gentleman emigrant in different parts of the world," and his account was addressed throughout to this elite emigrant population: the "white-handed" who leave England to find their fortunes in the colonies and who often find themselves ill-prepared for the rigours of colonial life, especially in Australia. Stamer provided an engaging and conversational narrative, which aimed to be a corrective to the "highly coloured descriptions of colonial pamphleteers." However, it revealed little practical detail for the potential emigrant, instead consisting of instructive tales of supposed colonial experience. Stamer also wrote Recollections of a Life of Adventure (1866).