Public-domain ebook
by Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke
Language: en1,841 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Australia·Historical Novels·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #3424.
This work is a sprawling historical‑fiction saga that sets out to portray the grim reality of penal transportation in the early nineteenth‑century British Empire. The author opens with a polemic preface, contrasting his ambition with the limited depictions of convicts by Charles Reade and Victor Hugo, and then launches into a series of four books that trace a convict’s journey from a prison ship in 1827 through the brutal settlements of Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk Island, ending with a reflective epilogue. The narrative begins in a genteel Hampstead garden where Sir Richard Devine, a self‑made millionaire, confronts his wife and son over a long‑concealed scandal, a scene that immediately introduces themes of betrayal, authority, and the harsh discipline that will later echo in the penal colonies.
The prose reflects the Victorian sensibility of its 1860s publication date, employing a formal, often didactic voice that mixes detailed description with moral commentary. Its structure, interwoven with diary excerpts, ship logs, and courtroom‑like interrogations, creates a dense, immersive texture that rewards readers who appreciate thorough period research and a panoramic view of colonial cruelty. Those interested in Australian history, penal‑system studies, or expansive family dramas set against a backdrop of exile and survival will find this novel’s blend of factual grounding and dramatic storytelling compelling.
The opening · free to read
The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning or at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim interest by reason of an equally unintelligible love of crime acquired during his experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn the interior of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But no writer--so far as I am aware--has attempted to depict the dismal condition of a felon during his term of transportation.
I have endeavoured in “His Natural Life” to set forth the working and the results of an English system of transportation carefully considered and carried out under official supervision; and to illustrate in the manner best calculated, as I think, to attract general attention, the inexpediency of again allowing offenders against the law to be herded together in places remote from the wholesome influence of public opinion, and to be submitted to a discipline which must necessarily depend for its just administration upon the personal character and temper of their gaolers.
Your critical faculty will doubtless find, in the construction and artistic working of this book, many faults. I do not think, however, that you will discover any exaggerations. Some of the events narrated are doubtless tragic and terrible; but I hold it needful to my purpose to record them, for they are events which have actually occurred, and which, if the blunders which produced them be repeated, must infallibly occur again. It is true that the British Government have ceased to deport the criminals of England, but the method of punishment, of which that deportation was a part, is still in existence. Port Blair is a Port Arthur filled with Indian-men instead of Englishmen; and, within the last year, France has established, at New Caledonia, a penal settlement which will, in the natural course of things, repeat in its annals the history of Macquarie Harbour and of Norfolk Island.
With this brief preface I beg you to accept this work. I would that its merits were equal either to your kindness or to my regard.
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