Review of Adam Lindsay Gordon by W.H. Wilde; and Rolf Boldrewood by Alan Brissendon

Abstract

Boldrewood and Gordon are both buried in Brighton cemetery, and they were both enthusiasts in the nineteenth-century cult of the horse. And that is just about all they had in common, judging by these two monographs. It ought to be possible to forge a closer coincidence than that, for they are the very types of the colonial experience, and in some ways apparently its focus, given the popular—if delayed and ultimately misplaced—acclaim of their work. Which is to say that they are more interesting for what they represent than what they recreate.