Rolf Boldrewood - 'Colonial Experience', ca. 1900

MLMSS 7136

fonds

ca. 1900

421099

Microfilm : CY 4553, frames 1-18 (MLMSS 7136)

1 folder - 0.01 Meters
Textual Records - (manuscript)

Rolf Boldrewood was the pseudonym of Thomas Alexander Browne (1826-1915), pastoralist, police magistrate, gold commissioner and novelist. He was born in England and came to Australia at the age of five. His most famous novel, 'Robbery under arms', was serialised in the Sydney Mail, 1882-83 and published as a book in 1889.

Original manuscript (10 pages, in ink) with various alterations to the text by the author. The essay promotes the benefits of colonial experience for intelligent and hard-working young British men based on Boldrewood's life-long experience of outback life. It was written in response to an article by Rev. W. Yorke which appeared in the British magazine The Nineteenth Century, discouraging British parents from sending their sons to Australia. Boldrewood considered Yorke's assertions "not only libellous and unfair to Australian pastoralists but ridiculously incorrect".