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
Condition remarks: minor nick/tear on the fep
Before the gold rushes transformed Melbourne into a boomtown of frantic ambition and immigrant masses, a small, self-conscious colonial elite attempted to transplant the manners, customs, and hierarchies of English gentility to the remote shores of Port Phillip Bay. Paul De Serville's Port Phillip Gentlemen chronicles the aspirations and contradictions of this fledgling upper class — squatters, merchants, and officials who dressed for dinner in the bush, debated precedence at Government House, and struggled to maintain the veneer of civilisation on the raw edge of the British Empire. Drawing on diaries, correspondence, and colonial records, De Serville presents a richly detailed social history that illuminates the tensions between egalitarian frontier realities and the rigid class consciousness imported from the mother country. The work stands as a landmark in Australian historiography, arguing convincingly that the pre-gold-rush period was far more socially complex and culturally ambitious than previously acknowledged. It is a portrait of a world on the cusp of irreversible change — and of the gentlemen who never quite managed to hold it still.
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
Condition remarks: minor nick/tear on the fep
Before the gold rushes transformed Melbourne into a boomtown of frantic ambition and immigrant masses, a small, self-conscious colonial elite attempted to transplant the manners, customs, and hierarchies of English gentility to the remote shores of Port Phillip Bay. Paul De Serville's Port Phillip Gentlemen chronicles the aspirations and contradictions of this fledgling upper class — squatters, merchants, and officials who dressed for dinner in the bush, debated precedence at Government House, and struggled to maintain the veneer of civilisation on the raw edge of the British Empire. Drawing on diaries, correspondence, and colonial records, De Serville presents a richly detailed social history that illuminates the tensions between egalitarian frontier realities and the rigid class consciousness imported from the mother country. The work stands as a landmark in Australian historiography, arguing convincingly that the pre-gold-rush period was far more socially complex and culturally ambitious than previously acknowledged. It is a portrait of a world on the cusp of irreversible change — and of the gentlemen who never quite managed to hold it still.