The Felonry of New South Wales with Anecdotes of Botany Bay Society by James Mudie Esq. (Second Hand Book)

SECOND HAND BOOK

Few authors have had the temerity to address their public as bluntly as did James Madie in The Felonry of New South Wales:

“The author has ventured to coin the world felonry as the appellative of an order or class of persons in New South Wales–an order which happily exists in no other country in the world. . . . The author has the honour of especially presenting it to the gentlemen emancipists, alias the emancipated felons of the colony by whom he has no doubt it will be received with the most peculiar approbation and delight. . . .”

Published at London in 1837, a year after Mudie’s return from Australia, and at a time when the young Colony was as sharply divided by the struggle between the Emancipists and the Exclusives, it created a sensation when copies arrived in Sydney. Mudie’s indictment of all and sundry, high and low backed by his fourteen years as a landholder of Castle Forbes, a property in the Hunter River valley, was not forgotten and on his return to Sydney some time later he was horsewhipped by the son of a Mr. Kinchella in the street. Mudie was awarded 50 pounds in damages for this assault.

Mudie’s Felonry will always be an important book for those interested in the convict period and will take its place beside those of other chroniclers of the time as a picture of the times. Marginal annotations discovered recently or already published are incorporated in an appendix by the editor, Walter Stone.

Specifications:

Condition : Fair. Stainings and markings on dust jacket, pages yellowed but no tears, some creasing and wear on the corners and edges of dust jacket.

Publisher: Lansdowne Press

Year: 1964 (first published in 1837)

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 215

ISBN: N/A

$55.00

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