"Denison was Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania between 1846 and 1855, and Governor of New South Wales and Governor-General from 1855 to 1861, when he became Governor of Madras. Only the first volume of Varieties of Vice-Regal Life refers to his life in Australia. It consists of transcripts of his letters to relatives and friends and to a lesser extent, officials, in England, and extracts from letters written in journal form by his wife Caroline, addressed to her family. Denison justifies the use of letters to form a record of his life by stating, in his preface, that they give 'a truthfulness that can never be attributed to mere reminiscences' and that they can provide different viewpoints of circumstances and events. The letters are largely allowed to speak for themselves, but are linked by some retrospective comment by way of explanation or summary" (Walsh and Hooton 52-3).
Source
Walsh, Kay and Joy Hooton. Australian Autobiographical Narratives : An Annotated Bibliography. Canberra : Australian Scholarly Editions Centre, University College, ADFA and National Library of Australia, 1993.
