The Treatment of the Aborigine in Early Australian Fiction, 1840-70
Abstract
The novels which we will look at belong almost to different universes of discourse. Rowcroft's Tales of the Colonies (1843) deals with the aborigine in terms of the literary world of London in the forties. Cawthorne's The Kangaroo Islanders (written in 1823 not published until 1926) records the aborigines with the sympathetic eye of the detached observer. And de Boos wrote Fifty Years Ago (1867) within the shadow of Fenimore Cooper's Indians. All of them, it seems, had available to them contact with the aborigines, and one of the considerations we shall bear in mind will be the nature and extent to which Howitt's paper indulgences were invoked.
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Published 1 May 1972 in Volume 5 No. 3. Subjects: Aboriginal Australians - Literary portrayal, Colonial literature & writers.
Cite as: Healy, J. J.. ‘The Treatment of the Aborigine in Early Australian Fiction, 1840-70.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, 1972, doi: 10.20314/als.19085e2513.