SOURCE: Jones, Joseph, and Johanna Jones. Australian Fiction, pp. 1-15. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983.

In the following excerpt, Jones and Jones survey convict, settler, and Anglo-Australian fiction prior to 1890.

Settlers, Convicts, and Early Narrative

In the spring of 1788, the First Fleet of eleven nondescript vessels set sail for New Holland, carrying just under fifteen hundred convicts and their military guards to exactly where, and what, they weren't at all certain. Not many years before this event, it could be said, the English novel had embarked on a voyage equally unforeseeable. To be sure, it had not committed any crimes but was thought nevertheless to be socially reprehensible. It would remain under suspicion for another half century or more, by which time it would long since have justified itself before all but the most puritanical of juries. Instead of a few names to show—Richardson, Fielding, Burney, Smollett, Radcliffe, Sterne...