The Academy Editions of Australian Literature
The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn
by Henry Kingsley
Edited by Stanton Mellick, Patrick Morgan and Paul Eggert
General Editor Paul Eggert
The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn by Henry Kingsley has remained in print from its first publication in 1859 to the present day. It is the first work of Australian literature to have established a permanent place with the general reading public. Its continuous popularity lies in its expansive recreation of a formative era in the colonial experience when emigrants from England, who saw the continent as 'a new heaven and a new earth', spread out over the golden lands of Australia Felix.
The Academy Edition, published in 1996, provides the text of the first publication by Macmillan in 1859 and records authorial and other revisions made for later printings. Extensive explanatory notes, maps, and an essay on the historical background of the novel are provided.
A preview of the publication can be downloaded here (with Adobe Acrobat):
- Front Matter
- Samples of Text: Ch. I and Ch. X
- Explanatory Notes, Historical Collation, Sample Collation
About the Author
Henry Kingsley (1830-76) lived in Australia from 1853 to 1858, travelling widely in Victoria and New South Wales. A man from a respectable English family, Kingsley learned in Australia what rough living was like. While many of his writings contain Australian material, his major contributions to Australian literature are the emigrant success stories, The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn (1859) and The Hillyars and the Burtons (1865).
About the Editors
Stanton Mellick has for many years conducted research into the life and work of Henry Kingsley. He edited the Kingsley volume in the Australian Authors Series (UQP, 1982), wrote The Passing Guest: A Life of Henry Kingsley (UQP, 1983) and was an associate editor of The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia (1987). Dr Mellick was formerly Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Queensland.
Patrick Morgan was formerly Senior Lecturer in English at Monash University Gippsland Campus. He has published on the connections between literature and history in Australia, particularly eastern Victoria where much of The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn is set.
Paul Eggert directs the Australian Scholarly Editions Centre at ADFA in Canberra and is Associate Professor in its School of English. He edited The Boy in the Bush (1990) and Twilight in Italy and Other Essays (1994) for the Cambridge University Press Works of D. H. Lawrence series.
To order go to www.uqp.uq.edu.au