'Anthony Trollope – prolific novelist and inveterate traveller – explored Australia and New Zealand in the 1870s. In completing this odyssey, he became the first celebrity in popular culture to visit the Australasian colonies. His memoir inspired by those travels (Australia and New Zealand) was described by The Times as "the best account" of those lands "yet published".
'Now, to mark the bicentenary of Trollope’s birth, the Australian author Nigel Starck reveals the full story: the mix of acclamation and condemnation that Anthony Trollope provoked; his encounters with gold prospectors, the Aborigines of Australia and the Maori of New Zealand, pioneers, and convicts; his constant battles with the colonial press; the son whose life as a sheep farmer inspired a novel; and the ancient baronetcy inherited by Trollope’s Australian descendants after misadventure and misfortune elsewhere in the extended family.' (Publisher's abstract)