{"product_id":"2026200015898-secondhand-the-hermit-in-van-diemens-land","title":"The Hermit In Van Diemen's Land","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Worn\/faded, no tears\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLong before Australia had a literary tradition to call its own, Henry Savery — convict, bankrupt, and inveterate observer — was quietly laying its foundations from the edge of the known world. The Hermit in Van Diemen's Land is a landmark collection of satirical sketches and essays, originally published in the Hobart Town Gazette in 1829, that chronicles colonial Tasmanian society with a sharp, ironic wit that would not have been out of place in the drawing rooms of Regency London. Through the fictional persona of a reclusive hermit, Savery dissects the manners, pretensions, and social hierarchies of a fledgling penal colony with the precision of a scalpel, creating an unprecedented portrait of a society still inventing itself at the uttermost ends of the earth.\n\nEdited with scholarly rigour by Cecil Hadgraft, whose biographical introduction situates Savery within the turbulent arc of his remarkable and troubled life, and supplemented with meticulous notes on the real persons satirised by Margriet Roe, this University of Queensland Press edition transforms a scarce colonial curiosity into an accessible and essential text. Savery's prose carries the unmistakable stamp of a man educated in English letters yet condemned to reinvent himself on foreign soil, lending the work a tension between cultural aspiration and colonial reality that resonates far beyond its historical moment. For anyone who wishes to understand how Australian literature began — not with noble sentiment, but with a convict's sardonic eye — this volume is an indispensable starting point.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203265994971,"sku":"2026200015898-SECONDHAND","price":40.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/e9b815ec-70ef-4a62-939c-7e34c3688995.png?v=1788146934","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200015898-secondhand-the-hermit-in-van-diemens-land","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}