Cirrus@Austlit

'Barron Field was, as we argued in our recent book Barron Field in New South Wales, responsible for the first volume of poetry published in Australia – a status flaunted in its title, First Fruits of Australian Poetry – and responsible also for the first articulation of the doctrine that later came to be known as terra nullius: that is, the foundational and genocidal legal fiction under which Australia was colonised by the British on the basis of its being previously uninhabited: i.e., that Aboriginal people, at least in the eyes of the law, simply didn’t exist, and, as not existing de jure, could be handled so as to become equally inexistent de facto. Our book examined what these two notable firsts had to do with each other. We claimed that it was no coincidence that the first Australian poet – the first person to have laid claim to that title, and indeed to have invented that category – was also the first legislator of terra nullius. Through close readings of the six poems that made up Field’s book from its second edition in 1823 – the first edition of 1819 contained just two poems – we argued that, far from being merely supplemental to his legal reformulation of the basis of colonisation, poetry was in fact instrumental to Field’s program to re-establish New South Wales on a new constitutional footing premised counterfactually on the non-existence of Aboriginal societies. To revert to a famous tag by Percy Shelley to which we paid considerable attention in the book: this poet really was the unacknowledged legislator of white Australia. In this foundational moment, the liberal colonial regime that underpinned future national development was poetic, we claimed, in inspiration, design and operation.'  (Introduction)

'What does the first poetry in Australia, written by the Judge who declared the land terra nullius, tell us about the singular nature of colonialism here?

'On 24 February 1817, Barron Field sailed into Sydney Harbour on the convict transport Lord Melville to a ceremonial thirteen-gun salute. He was there as the new Judge of the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature in New South Wales - the highest legal authority in the turbulent colony. Energetic and gregarious, Field immediately set about impressing his vision of a future Australia as a liberal and prosperous nation. He courted the colony's leading figures, engaged in scientific research and even founded Australia's first bank. He also wrote poetry: in 1819, he published First Fruits of Australian Poetry, the first book of poems ever printed in the country. In England, Field had been the theatre critic for The Times, and a friend of such major Romantic writers as William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt. In New South Wales, he saw the chance to become a major figure himself…' (Publication summary)

'Literature by Indigenous Australians - the voice from the heart - is the true core of the Australian canon, writes Geordie Williamson The ur-text of the Australian canon appeared just over two centuries ago, in 1819, when First Fruits of Australian Poetry by Barron Field, a Supreme Court judge of New South Wales with literary pretensions, was published in Sydney.' (Introduction)

'In Australian literature, Barron Field is at once marginal and foundational. His usual claim to fame is that in 1819 he published the first book of poetry in Australia, a collection entitled First Fruits of Australian Poetry and comprised of two poems, which he then republished with four further poems in 1823. Notably, the book was self‐published using the official government printer, and bears on its title page the declaration ‘For Private Distribution’.' (Introduction)