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Vanessa Finney, Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, colonial Sydney’s finest natural history painters
Vanessa Finney, Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, colonial Sydney’s finest natural history painters NewSouth Books, 2018, 204 pp. (plus notes and index), ISBN: 9781742235806, h/bk, AUS$49.99 Harriet Scott (Morgan) (1830–1907) and Helena Scott (Forde) (1832–1910) were, as natural history artists, without peer…
Julie McIntyre and John Germov, Hunter Wine: A History
Julie McIntyre and John Germov, Hunter Wine: A History NewSouth Books, 2018, 287 pp. (plus bibliography and index), ISBN: 9781742235769, p/bk, AUS$49.99 Robert Louis Stevenson once suggested 'wine is bottled poetry'. In their captivating new book Hunter Wine: A History, historian Julie McIntyre…
Sam Willis and James Daybell, Histories of the Unexpected: how everything has a history
Sam Willis and James Daybell, Histories of the Unexpected: how everything has a history Atlantic Books, 2018, 465pp., ISBN: 9781786494122, (h/bk), AUS$39.99 Histories of the Unexpected: how everything has a history, by British celebrity historians Sam Willis and James Daybell, is based…
Stephen Knight, Australian Crime Fiction: a 200-year history
Stephen Knight, Australian Crime Fiction: a 200-year history McFarland Books, 2018, 301pp., ISBN: 9781476670867 (p/bk), US$45.00 Stephen Knight’s new work Australian Crime Fiction: a 200-year history is a re-working and critical updating of his seminal text Continent of Mystery: a thematic history of Australian…
Elizabeth Malcolm and Dianne Hall, A New History of the Irish in Australia
Elizabeth Malcolm and Dianne Hall, A New History of the Irish in Australia New South Books, 2018, 448pp, ISBN: 9781742235530 (p/b), RRP: $34.99 In 1986 Patrick O’Farrell published The Irish in Australia. At the time, the book was both feted and criticised…
Ruth L Lee, Woman War Doctor: The Life of Mary De Garis
Ruth L Lee, Woman War Doctor: The Life of Mary De Garis Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014, x + 197pp, ISBN: 9781925003420 (p/b), RRP: AUS$39.95 Pioneering Australian woman doctor Mary de Garis comes to life in this stimulating biography by Australian author and academic Dr Ruth…
Philippa Sandall, Seafurrers: the Ships' Cats Who Lapped and Mapped the World
Philippa Sandall, Seafurrers: the Ships' Cats Who Lapped and Mapped the World Affirm Press, 2017, 244pp., ISBN: 9781925712155, h/bk, AUS $24.99 Matthew Flinders was onto something when he wrote his little treatise about his faithful cat Trim. He could not have foreseen that cats would…
The Penrith Museum of Printing
Albion Printing press, c1860 at the Museum of Printing, photo by Alison Wishart The Penrith Museum of Printing Sydney is lucky to have one of the few operational printing museums in the world. Yes, all the old printing presses in this museum actually…
Alan Frost, Mutiny, Mayhem, Mythology: Bounty’s Enigmatic Voyage
Alan Frost, Mutiny, Mayhem, Mythology: Bounty’s Enigmatic Voyage Sydney University Press, 2018, 336pp., ISBN: 9781743325872, p/bk, AUS $40.00 With more than 3,000 published books and articles about the Bounty’s voyages and its various aftermaths, do we need another one? Professor Frost believes we do…
Sarah Luke, Callan Park Hospital for the Insane
Sarah Luke, Callan Park Hospital for the Insane Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018, 253 pp., ISBN: 9781925588965, p/bk, AUS $39.95 The nineteenth century lunatic asylum, in both the literary and the historical imagination, is often a lurid and depressingly dark place. The story goes that mad…