Rolf Boldrewood was the pseudonym of the novelist Thomas Alexander Browne, author of the Australian classic Robbery Under Arms (1888). An obituary in the conservative newspaper Argus (Melbourne) acknowledged him as one of the three major Australian novelists of the nineteenth century (the others were Henry Kingsley and Marcus Clarke). Browne is now regarded by literary historians as a bridge between the early colonial period and the present. He had three careers--as a pastoralist (1843-1869), as a civil servant (1871-1895), and overlapping with the second, as a writer (ca. 1873-ca. 1905).

The eldest child of an Irish-born merchant mariner, Captain Sylvester Brown, and his English wife, Eliza (née Alexander), Thomas Alexander was born in London on 6 August 1826. However, no official confirmation of the event has been found, despite long searches by relations. Browne always emphasized his debt to England (its culture and national virtues) and ignored his Irish...