Cirrus@Austlit

'‘The rats I frighten away by throwing books or anything hard at the spot at which they commence their gnawing.’

'Emigrant Janet Ronald wrote this in the journal she kept on board one of the ships transporting free settlers from Britain and Ireland to Australia in the nineteenth century.

'On journeys lasting more than 100 days, non-stop, our forebears endured raging seas, the dazzling heat of the tropics and freezing temperatures as ships journeyed far into the southerly latitudes. They also formed social communities, putting on plays, developing sometimes lasting relationships and taking part in wild nautical rituals.

'Using diary entries and shipboard newspapers, author Roslyn Russell gives a vivid sense of what it was like to leave one life for another and sail across the world into the unknown. In the foreword, Kerry O’Brien writes about his Irish ancestors’ perilous voyages to Australia in the nineteenth century—as both free settlers and guests of Her Majesty.' (Publication summary)

'Manning Clark is Australia's most influential historian, and his work continues to set agendas and generate debate long after his death. This selection of his letters offers an unparalleled view of the complex intellectual and emotional life of this controversial figure.

'From his time as a young man at Oxford in the late 1930s, to his final days half a century later, he maintained a lively and erudite correspondence with family and with a wide range of public figures and other people. With an immediacy not visible in Clark's published work, his letters reveal his life-long struggle to tell the story of his country. They also embody his hopes for Australia and the dismay he felt about many trends he saw emerging in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

'The letters track a progression from academic to public sage, as well as the influence of his personal life upon his work. Correspondence from his travels to the Soviet Union, the USA and other countries reflect a biting insight as well as attitudes that might surprise the many who have accused him of left-wing bias.' (Publisher's blurb)