Rolf Boldrewood and his Australian Model for Closer Colonization of North Africa

Abstract

It has long been known, as with Tom Inglis Moore's comments, that Thomas Alexander Browne (or the colonial novelist 'Rolf Boldrewood') (1826-1915) wrote the two 'anonymous' volumes published by S.W. Silver and Co. of London as the 'Australian Grazier's Guide'. The matter of this authorship is also referred to by the critic Alan Brissenden in his short study, 'Rolf Boldrewood' (1972),: "These are uncomplicated, helpful manuals ... The 'Grazier's Guides' were published anonymously and never publicly acknowledged by their author, who had no need to be ashamed of them." (p.11). The reason for these eminently practical publications being so commissioned appears to be that their publisher, S.W. Silver and Co., had issued in 1878 as a book T.A. Browne's serial of 1875, 'The Squatters Dream', with the title altered to 'Ups and Downs', even making the realistic story the first, and seemingly sole, volume in a series entitled 'Readings for Colonists'. As Brissenden well observes, the 'Guides' are more important than 'Ups and Downs' - his reason (unstated) presumably being because of their superior quality and also because they can be shown by a close comparison to be the source of much important linguistic and vernacular detail to be found in 'Robbery Under Arms', originally serialised in the 'Sydney Mail' from 1 July 1882 - 11 August 1883.