y separately published work icon The Kangaroo Hunters, or, Adventures in the Bush single work   children's fiction   children's   adventure  
Issue Details: First known date: 1858... 1858 The Kangaroo Hunters, or, Adventures in the Bush
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Notes

  • Epigraph:

    'Light and limber, upwards driven,

    On the hoar crag quivering;

    Or through gorges thunder-riven,

    Leaps she with her airy spring!

    But behind her still, the foe-

    Near, and near the deadly bow!'

    -Schiller, translated by Bulwer.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Routledge ,
      1858 .
      Extent: iv, 444p.[8] leaves of platesp.
      Description: illus.
      Reprinted: 1859 , 1860
    • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Porter and Coates ,
      1858 .
      Link: U3154Full text document Digital copy of 1858 edition. See copyright information on site for any usage restrictions.
      Extent: xii, 463 p.p.
      Edition info: Alta edition.
      Description: illus.
      Note/s:
      • Illustrated frontispiece.
    • Boston, Massachusetts,
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Crosby, Nichols & Lee ,
      1860 .
      Extent: vii, 463p.p.
      Description: [7] leaves of plates : illus.
      Reprinted: 1861 , 1864
Alternative title: Voyage au Pays des Kangarous
Language: French

Works about this Work

Colonial Adventure Novels Ken Gelder , Rachael Weaver , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
The Australian Kangaroo Hunt Novel (1830–1858) as Bildungsroman Ken Gelder , Rachael Weaver , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , July vol. 34 no. 1 2019;

' In Australia – and no doubt in other outposts of empire – hunting provided a rite of passage for ambitious young men to learn about local conditions and establish their colonial credentials. This article argues that the kangaroo hunt narrative therefore operated as a kind of colonial bildungsroman or novel of education. It examines three kangaroo hunt novels written by women who had in fact never travelled to Australia. The first is Sarah Porter’s Alfred Dudley; or, The Australian Settlers (1830). Porter’s novel shows that the kangaroo hunt is incompatible with the bourgeois sensibilities of an aspirant settler who revolts from ‘scenes of blood’. But other colonial bildungsromans invested in the adventure of hunting as a reward in itself. The second published kangaroo hunt novel is Sarah Bowdich Lee’s Adventures in Australia; or, the Wanderings of Captain Spencer in the Bush and the Wilds (1851); the third is Anne Bowman’s The Kangaroo Hunters; or, Adventures in the Bush (1858). Lee’s novel gives free play to the kangaroo hunt, exploring its possibilities for both Aboriginal and settler identities, while Bowman’s novel puts the kangaroo hunt into an ethical discussion of killing on the frontier. These British novelists imagine frontier experiences in colonial Australia by drawing on a range of Australian source material. Their novels present Australia as a testing ground for young male adventurers. The kangaroo hunt is their defining experience, something to survive and in some cases, finally, to disavow as they transition from emigrants to settlers.'

Source: Abstract.

y separately published work icon From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature, 1840-1940 Michelle J. Smith , Kristine Moruzi , Clare Bradford , Toronto : University of Toronto Press , 2018 15039944 2018 multi chapter work criticism

'Through a comparison of Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand texts published between 1840 and 1940, From Colonial to Modern develops a new history of colonial girlhoods revealing how girlhood in each of these emerging nations reflects a unique political, social, and cultural context.

'Print culture was central to the definition, and redefinition, of colonial girlhood during this period of rapid change. Models of girlhood are shared between settler colonies and contain many similar attitudes towards family, the natural world, education, employment, modernity, and race, yet, as the authors argue, these texts also reveal different attitudes that emerged out of distinct colonial experiences. Unlike the imperial model representing the British ideal, the transnational girl is an adaptation of British imperial femininity and holds, for example, a unique perception of Indigenous culture and imperialism. Drawing on fiction, girls’ magazines, and school magazine, the authors shine a light on neglected corners of the literary histories of these three nations and strengthen our knowledge of femininity in white settler colonies.'  (Publication summary)

Britishness and Australian Popular Fiction : From the Mid-Nineteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Centuries Hsu-Ming Teo , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Sold by the Millions : Australia's Bestsellers 2012; (p. 46-66)
'The analysis offered here is [...], a panoptic perspective of the tangled skeins of literary imagination and imitation, gender and genre requirements, editorial control, market considerations and the sheer economics of the international book trade that knotted Australian popular literature into the cultural and economic fabric of the British empire.' (47)
Competing Discourses in 'The Kangaroo Hunters' Robin Pope , 1998 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , December vol. 8 no. 3 1998; (p. 36-46)

Pope's detailed analysis of the novel, The Kangaroo Hunters, or, Adventures in the Bush, contends that while author Bowman 'makes her protest about received ideas regarding masculinity and empire, it is a modified statement which is itself subverted by the power of the dominant discourses which construct imperial discourse.' (46). Pope discusses the composition of Bowman's fictive constructions arguing that stories offer 'moral' truths rather than verifiable truths or probabilities and links this to the tendency of women writers to (traditionally) write in genres in which the 'truth status of the work was less questioned', such as nursery rhymes and fairy tales. In 1858, women writing about travel adventures for the young was rare and 'probably risky' considering that 'accounts of travel which demonstrated women as confronting and overcoming difficult circumstances in their own were presumed to be lies or gross exaggerations' (36-37). Pope critiques the text from the position that 'within imperial discourse other discourses circulate within their own systematic sets of ideas' and establishes how Bowman engages with discourses of race and (white) racial superiority, religion and Christianity, science and class in ways which 'frequently exceed or transgress the limits and conventions of what was accepted at the time' (37). However Pope argues that the discursive frameworks which the text attempts to challenge ultimately prevail in reinforcing the fundamental ideologies of masculine dominance (46).

Captivating Narratives : Reeling in the Nineteenth-Century Child Reader Robin Pope , 1997 single work criticism
— Appears in: La Trobe Library Journal , Spring no. 60 1997; (p. 134-147)
Britishness and Australian Popular Fiction : From the Mid-Nineteenth to the Mid-Twentieth Centuries Hsu-Ming Teo , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Sold by the Millions : Australia's Bestsellers 2012; (p. 46-66)
'The analysis offered here is [...], a panoptic perspective of the tangled skeins of literary imagination and imitation, gender and genre requirements, editorial control, market considerations and the sheer economics of the international book trade that knotted Australian popular literature into the cultural and economic fabric of the British empire.' (47)
Aussie Bards and Pom Reviewers : English Reviewers and Australian Writers in the Nineteenth Century Barry Argyle , 1990 single work criticism
— Appears in: Aspects of Australian Fiction : Essays Presented to John Colmer, Professor Emeritus of English, The University of Adelaide 1990; (p. 1-16)
Competing Discourses in 'The Kangaroo Hunters' Robin Pope , 1998 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , December vol. 8 no. 3 1998; (p. 36-46)

Pope's detailed analysis of the novel, The Kangaroo Hunters, or, Adventures in the Bush, contends that while author Bowman 'makes her protest about received ideas regarding masculinity and empire, it is a modified statement which is itself subverted by the power of the dominant discourses which construct imperial discourse.' (46). Pope discusses the composition of Bowman's fictive constructions arguing that stories offer 'moral' truths rather than verifiable truths or probabilities and links this to the tendency of women writers to (traditionally) write in genres in which the 'truth status of the work was less questioned', such as nursery rhymes and fairy tales. In 1858, women writing about travel adventures for the young was rare and 'probably risky' considering that 'accounts of travel which demonstrated women as confronting and overcoming difficult circumstances in their own were presumed to be lies or gross exaggerations' (36-37). Pope critiques the text from the position that 'within imperial discourse other discourses circulate within their own systematic sets of ideas' and establishes how Bowman engages with discourses of race and (white) racial superiority, religion and Christianity, science and class in ways which 'frequently exceed or transgress the limits and conventions of what was accepted at the time' (37). However Pope argues that the discursive frameworks which the text attempts to challenge ultimately prevail in reinforcing the fundamental ideologies of masculine dominance (46).

y separately published work icon From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children's Literature, 1840-1940 Michelle J. Smith , Kristine Moruzi , Clare Bradford , Toronto : University of Toronto Press , 2018 15039944 2018 multi chapter work criticism

'Through a comparison of Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand texts published between 1840 and 1940, From Colonial to Modern develops a new history of colonial girlhoods revealing how girlhood in each of these emerging nations reflects a unique political, social, and cultural context.

'Print culture was central to the definition, and redefinition, of colonial girlhood during this period of rapid change. Models of girlhood are shared between settler colonies and contain many similar attitudes towards family, the natural world, education, employment, modernity, and race, yet, as the authors argue, these texts also reveal different attitudes that emerged out of distinct colonial experiences. Unlike the imperial model representing the British ideal, the transnational girl is an adaptation of British imperial femininity and holds, for example, a unique perception of Indigenous culture and imperialism. Drawing on fiction, girls’ magazines, and school magazine, the authors shine a light on neglected corners of the literary histories of these three nations and strengthen our knowledge of femininity in white settler colonies.'  (Publication summary)

Last amended 5 Mar 2010 09:53:42
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