y separately published work icon Alfred Dudley, or, The Australian Settlers single work   children's fiction   children's  
Alternative title: Australian Settlers
Issue Details: First known date: 1830... 1830 Alfred Dudley, or, The Australian Settlers
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Notes

  • Authorship uncertain. 'A former owner of a copy in the National Library of Australia, Canberra, has written in the name of William Howitt as the author. No authority has, however, been found for this assertion. The author appears to have been Mrs G. Porter, from a trade list of Charles Knight.' (Bibliography of Australia / by John Alexander Ferguson. Item 1313 + 1313 rev.).
  • 'Porter ackowledges as her source for the novel The Present State of Australia : A Description of the Country, Its Advantages and Prospects, with References to Emigration: and a Particular Account of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of its Aboriginal Inhabitants.(1830) by Robert Dawson.' (From The Oxford Companion to Australian Children's Literature, 1993)
  • Ferguson 1313, 1313(rev), 3342.
  • Also available in microform.
  • Purported to be the earliest children's book set in Australia.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Harvey and Darton ,
      1830 .
      Link: U3242Full text document Reproduction of 1830 edition. See copyright information on site for any usage restrictions.
      Extent: vii, 193p.p.
      Description: illus., engraved frontispiece & [3]p. of engraved illus.
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Harvey and Darton ,
      ca. 1832 .
      Extent: iv, 196p., [9] leaves of platesp.
      Edition info: 2nd ed.
      Description: illus.
      Note/s:
      • Date of publication suggested by the Bodleian Library.
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Harvey and Darton ,
      1842 .
      Extent: iv, 196p., [9] leaves of platesp.
      Edition info: 2nd ed.
      Description: illus.
      Reprinted: 1856
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Darton & Clark ,
      1846 .
      Extent: iv, 196p.p.
      Edition info: New ed.
      Description: illus.

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.

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)
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)
The Literature of Contact J. J. Healy , 1989 single work criticism
— Appears in: Literature and the Aborigine in Australia 1770- 1975 1989; (p. 26-48)
This chapter examines the earliest works of fiction produced in Australia representing Aboriginal people as fictional characters. Healy traces a trajectory of works which seek to attribute meaning to Aboriginal Australians by white authors, beginning with the 1830 work Alfred Dudley by Sarah Porter. Nineteenth century representations by G. W. Rusden and James Tucker are also analysed.
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)
The Literature of Contact J. J. Healy , 1989 single work criticism
— Appears in: Literature and the Aborigine in Australia 1770- 1975 1989; (p. 26-48)
This chapter examines the earliest works of fiction produced in Australia representing Aboriginal people as fictional characters. Healy traces a trajectory of works which seek to attribute meaning to Aboriginal Australians by white authors, beginning with the 1830 work Alfred Dudley by Sarah Porter. Nineteenth century representations by G. W. Rusden and James Tucker are also analysed.
Country-House Landscapes of the Frontier : The Colonial Novel, 1830-1860 Robert Dixon , 1986 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Course of Empire : Neo-Classical Culture in New South Wales, 1788-1860 1986; (p. 154-192)
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.

Last amended 1 Jul 2009 10:02:56
Subjects:
  • Hunter Valley, Newcastle - Hunter Valley area, New South Wales,
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