SOURCE: Hadgraft, Cecil. “The Earliest Fiction” and “The Three Themes of Fiction.” In Australian Literature: A Critical Account to 1955, pp. 11-26, 40-52. London: William Heineman, 1960.

In the following excerpt, Hadgraft reviews the principal Australian novels of the nineteenth century.

The Earliest Fiction

The first novel written in Australia was also printed here—in Hobart in three volumes (1830-1). In this novel, Quintus Servinton. A Tale, Founded upon Incidents of Real Occurrence, its author drew upon his own experiences. He was Henry Savery (1793/4-1842), transported to Van Diemen's Land in 1825. He was a convict journalist with some degree of freedom; upon a second offence he was condemned to life imprisonment. In 1842 he died at Port Arthur—according to Henry Melville, owner of the Colonial Times (for which Savery wrote articles), by cutting his throat.

In the Preface Savery writes:

… it is no fiction, or the work of imagination, either...