The Fatal Shore: A History Of The Transportation Of Convicts To Australia, 1787-1868
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: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
For eighty years, Britain solved its overcrowded prison crisis by shipping its convicted criminals to the ends of the earth — and The Fatal Shore stands as the definitive account of that brutal, world-altering experiment. Robert Hughes chronicles the systematic transportation of over 160,000 convicts to the penal colonies of Australia between 1787 and 1868, painting a vivid and harrowing portrait of a society born from chains, suffering, and extraordinary resilience. Drawing on a vast wealth of primary sources — diaries, official records, and the desperate letters of the condemned — Hughes reconstructs the lives of the men, women, and children who were torn from Georgian and Victorian Britain and cast upon an alien continent, transforming a distant shore into what would become a nation. Hughes writes with the narrative sweep of a novelist and the rigorous authority of a historian, weaving together the stories of individual convicts with the grand arc of empire, class warfare, and colonial ambition. The Fatal Shore is not merely a record of punishment; it is a profound meditation on power, identity, and the way a society constructs itself from its darkest origins. Hailed as a masterwork of historical writing upon its publication, this landmark text forces a reckoning with the forgotten foundations of modern Australia — and leaves the reader to wonder how much of that founding violence still echoes in the present.
Author: Robert Hughes
Format: Hardback
Published: 1987, Collins Harvill
Genre: Australian history
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
For eighty years, Britain solved its overcrowded prison crisis by shipping its convicted criminals to the ends of the earth — and The Fatal Shore stands as the definitive account of that brutal, world-altering experiment. Robert Hughes chronicles the systematic transportation of over 160,000 convicts to the penal colonies of Australia between 1787 and 1868, painting a vivid and harrowing portrait of a society born from chains, suffering, and extraordinary resilience. Drawing on a vast wealth of primary sources — diaries, official records, and the desperate letters of the condemned — Hughes reconstructs the lives of the men, women, and children who were torn from Georgian and Victorian Britain and cast upon an alien continent, transforming a distant shore into what would become a nation. Hughes writes with the narrative sweep of a novelist and the rigorous authority of a historian, weaving together the stories of individual convicts with the grand arc of empire, class warfare, and colonial ambition. The Fatal Shore is not merely a record of punishment; it is a profound meditation on power, identity, and the way a society constructs itself from its darkest origins. Hailed as a masterwork of historical writing upon its publication, this landmark text forces a reckoning with the forgotten foundations of modern Australia — and leaves the reader to wonder how much of that founding violence still echoes in the present.