Andrews discusses the popularity and number in the early 1890s of Warung's convict stories in the Bulletin, arguing that the way Australians look at their convict past originates there. Warung's debatable view of the convict as one sinned against rather than sinner has survived well into the twentieth century. But because the stories have come to be seen as "contrived, melodramatic, excessively documented and verbose", their literary reputation has suffered.
