Cirrus@Austlit

Author's Preface: The series of stories from which the contents of this book are selected, and which have appeared, with an occasional intermission, in the weekly issues of The Bulletin during the last two years, are true in essence. There is not one in which the motive has not been suggested by or based upon, fact. They have been submitted to Australian readers as the first fruits, in literary form, of nearly twenty years' study and investigation of the sources of Australian history, and, however far his work falls short of the standard of graphic story-telling, the writer feels that he can honestly claim that he has sought to communicate to it the quality of historical truth. His principal aim throughout has been the preservation of the appropriate local colour and the historic atmosphere, and not the mere presentment of dramatic episodes. To this end he has directed analytic research and systematic industry, and if he has erred in his attempts to describe the subjects of The System as men and women, and not as chattels - things - numbers, the fault cannot be attributed to carelessness or to an indifference to the obligations which bind the historian. ....

B. G. Andrews comments that this work republishes eleven of the twenty-five instalments of the Bulletin newspaper series, 'Tales of the System', originally published between 24 May 1890 and 10 January 1891.('Textual Note', Tales of the Convict System: Selected Stories of Price Warung ed. B. G. Andrews (1975): xxxiii-xxxvi).