Furphy 2 - A Walter Scott Model for the Structure of Robbery Under Arms

Abstract

It is something of a commonplace of the criticism of the novels of Rolf Boldrewood (T.A.Browne, 1826-1915) that they were composed by a man steeped in the works of the great Scottish romantic and antiquarian. Several of the Australian's romances contained quotations from the master, most scraps of Scottish dialect and a like antiquarian attitude to the past as somehow more engaging, heroic and chivalrous than the novelist's own day. Both writers were able to invest their country's yesterday with more colour and glamour, and their pages with more genuinely eccentric character than their own times might have afforded. It is the contention now than an early novel from Walter Scott, 'The Pirate' (1822) provides much of the structure and pattern to Boldrewood's 'Robbery Under Arms', published serially in 1882-83 and as a book in 1888.