Cirrus@Austlit

'This is a book about readers on the move in the age of Victorian empire. It examines the libraries and reading habits of five reading constituencies from the long nineteenth century: shipboard emigrants, Australian convicts, Scottish settlers, polar explorers, and troops in the First World War. What was the role of reading in extreme circumstances? How were new meanings made under strange skies? How was reading connected with mobile communities in an age of expansion? Uncovering a vast range of sources from the period, from diaries, periodicals, and literary culture, Bill Bell reveals some remarkable and unanticipated insights into the way that reading operated within and upon the British Empire for over a century.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This beautifully written book tells the story of the penal settlement on Cockatoo Island, the struggle to build a dock and an autocratic superintendent who turned the island into a secret gentleman’s fight club with his bare-knuckle prize-fighting convicts. It is a true story of corruption, patronage and intrigue. With a cast of memorable characters, this is narrative history that is as exciting to read as a novel. The island was a microcosm of colonial life, where gentlemen and convicts were involved in drama, death, turmoil, farce and moments of compassion. In the background was the island, a place that confined and surprised them all. Guarded by sea and circling gulls, the island has been a potent element in the lives of all those who lived on it. Under the Colony’s Eye reveals some of its long-held secrets.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Bulldog and Musquito, Aboriginal warriors from the Hawkesbury, were captured and sent to Norfolk Island following frontier skirmishes in New South Wales. Eventually, Bulldog seems to have made it home. Musquito was transported to Van Diemen's Land, where he laboured as a convict servant. He never returned. Hohepa Te Umuroa was arrested near Wellington in 1846, with a group of Maori warriors. Five of the men were transported to Van Diemen's Land where Te Umuroa died in custody. More than 140 years later, his remains were carried home to New Zealand. Booy Piet, a twenty-six year-old Khoisan soldier from the Cape Colony, was transported to Van Diemen's Land for desertion in 1842. After three years of convict labour, he died in Hobart General Hospital. These men are among 130 aboriginal convicts who were transported to and within the Australian penal colonies. They lived, laboured, were punished, and died alongside other convicts, but until this groundbreaking book, their stories had largely been forgotten.' (Publisher's blurb)