Port Phillip Gentlemen: And Good Society In Melbourne Before The Gold Rushes
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Before the gold rush transformed Melbourne into a boomtown of fortune-seekers and frontier chaos, a remarkably refined society had already taken root on the shores of Port Phillip Bay — and Paul de Serville's Port Phillip Gentlemen chronicles its rise with meticulous and compelling detail. Set in the pre-1850s settlement of what would become Victoria, the work presents the pastoralists, merchants, and colonial administrators who fashioned a genteel social order in the antipodean wilderness, navigating questions of class, respectability, and civility far from their British homeland. De Serville writes with the precision of a historian and the eye of a social portraitist, drawing on primary sources to reconstruct the rituals, rivalries, and ambitions that defined Melbourne's founding elite. The work stands as a significant contribution to Australian colonial history, illuminating how transplanted English ideals of good society were both preserved and transformed under the pressures of a new land. For anyone curious about the sophisticated world that existed before the gold rushes swept it all away, this is an indispensable and richly rewarding read.
Author: Paul De Serville
Format: Hardback
Published: 1980, Oxford University Press
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Before the gold rush transformed Melbourne into a boomtown of fortune-seekers and frontier chaos, a remarkably refined society had already taken root on the shores of Port Phillip Bay — and Paul de Serville's Port Phillip Gentlemen chronicles its rise with meticulous and compelling detail. Set in the pre-1850s settlement of what would become Victoria, the work presents the pastoralists, merchants, and colonial administrators who fashioned a genteel social order in the antipodean wilderness, navigating questions of class, respectability, and civility far from their British homeland. De Serville writes with the precision of a historian and the eye of a social portraitist, drawing on primary sources to reconstruct the rituals, rivalries, and ambitions that defined Melbourne's founding elite. The work stands as a significant contribution to Australian colonial history, illuminating how transplanted English ideals of good society were both preserved and transformed under the pressures of a new land. For anyone curious about the sophisticated world that existed before the gold rushes swept it all away, this is an indispensable and richly rewarding read.