'This novel is set in a remote British penal colony in the 1790s. It gives an insight into the settlement of hungry transports and corrupt soldiers, and tells the story of Corporal Phelim Halloran, and the demands made on him - by superior officers and, most often, by his conscience.' (Source: LibrariesAustralia)
'This outstanding novel is set in a remote British penal colony, late in the 1790s. Thomas Keneally's evocative writing gives us searing insight into the sun-parched settlements of hungry transports and corruptive soldiers. But this is not an 'historical' novel in the usual sense. It is the story of a man, Corporal Phelim Halloran, and of the demands made on him - by his girl, his Irish comrades, his superior officers, and, most often, by his conscience. Innocent and lover, poet, soldier-by-accident, scholar by the standards of his day, Halloran attempts to make a world unto himself. through his pity and love for Ann Rush, his 'secret bride'; but many seem pledged to complicate these simple desires. There is the convict-artist, Thomas Ewers, persecuted and compelled to illustrate the officers' journals. There is Halloran's feckless colleague, Terry Byrne. The convict, Quinn, whose term of imprisonment should have been nearly over. Robert Hearne, political prisoner, government clerk and traitor. Halloran comes to disbelieve in any other existence except his own and God's, until, shockingly and irrevocably, he is reunited with Ann.' (Source: Publisher's Website)
Halloran's Little Boat : A Play Based on the Novel 'Bring Larks and Heroes'
1966
Harmondsworth
Ringwood
:
Penguin
,
1975
Z863393
1966
single work
drama
Author's note:
'This novel is set in a penal colony in the South Pacific. The time is the late eighteenth century. Though the germ-idea from which the book grew was a passage in Captain Watkin Tench’s journal, Account of Settlement at Port Jackson, and although many of the administrative details of the fictional station will resemble those of the settlement of which Tench wrote, the members of the administration are all – for better or worse – imaginary. The geography of the coony suggest that of Sydne, but is not meant to be identified with. An example of the liberties I have taken is the use of the word ‘felon’ in preference to ‘convict’. While ‘felon’ did not, until well into the nineteenth century, become a general term for transported prisoners, it is used generally of prisoners in this story. ‘Convict’ is a word with possesses pungent tones and colours, a word loaded with distracting evocations, especially for Australian readers. Whereas ‘felon’ was free to take on the colour of whatever happened in these pages. Anachronistic idioms have been avoided wherever their use would seem too blatant. But it is hoped that the reader who accepts the claim that the world of this novel is a world of its own will also accept the claim that it is allowed to have an idiom of its own.'
'The article picks up references to novelist Thomas Keneally’s interest in painting and tracks his uses of artists and painting in selected fiction. Visual art supplies style and thematic depth to Bring Larks and Heroes, is integral to the complexity underpinning the murder-mystery of A Victim of the Aurora, allows narrative perspective and structural coherence in Confederates, and connects with elements in The Daughters of Mars that echo the novelist’s positioning of his work across both Europe and Australia, and between commercial and literary fiction.' (Publication abstract)
Ancestral Narratives: Irish-Australian Identities in History and Fiction
Saarbrucken
:
VDM Verlag
,
2008-2009
Z1664583
2008-2009
single work
criticism
