Henry Kingsley and the Australian Landscape

Abstract

Filed in the manuscripts section of the Mitchell Library are nine very interesting watercolour paintings by Henry Kingsley. They were referred to briefly by Brian Elliott in Australian Literary Studies (vol. 3, no. 4, 1968), but the descriptions of the scenes, which Kingsley himself wrote on the reverse side of the paintings, have not yet been recorded. They provide further clues to Kingsley's travels during his five years in Australia and positive identification of several localities mentioned in his writing. The paintings have been found by the library, and for convenience I have numbered them according to the order in which they appear. The description on the first has been written in pencil, all the others are in ink in a strong, clear hand which corresponds with a signed letter by Kingsley held in the Mitchell Library. I have not changed his punctuation or his spelling, which is erratic, even allowing for accepted variations in place names.