Tom Bower was a poacher and something of a ne'er do well, who fell foul of draconian game laws of the time and ended up being transported to Australia with little hope of return. His story is fascinating as well as sad - a real-life tale uncovered by a living relative.

Winner of the Commonwealth Prize New York Times Book Review—Notable Fiction 2002 Entertainment Weekly—Best Fiction of 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Review—Best of the Best 2002 Washington Post Book World—Raves 2002 Chicago Tribune—Favorite Books of 2002 Christian Science Monitor—Best Books 2002 Publishers Weekly—Best Books of 2002 The Cleveland Plain Dealer—Year’s Best Books Minneapolis Star Tribune—Standout Books of 2002 Once upon a time, when the earth was still young, before the fish in the sea and all the living things on land began to be destroyed, a man named William Buelow Gould was sentenced to life imprisonment at the most feared penal colony in the British Empire, and there ordered to paint a book of fish. He fell in love with the black mistress of the warder and discovered too late that to love is not safe; he attempted to keep a record of the strange reality he saw in prison, only to realize that history is not written by those who are ruled. Acclaimed as a masterpiece around the world, Gould’s Book of Fish is at once a marvelously imagined epic of nineteenth-century Australia and a contemporary fable, a tale of horror, and a celebration of love, all transformed by a convict painter into pictures of fish.

Our Island Story is the "history" of England up to Queen Victoria's Death. Marshall used these stories to tell her children about their homeland, Great Britain. To add to the excitement, she mixed in a bit of myth as well as a few legends.

"Samuel Sidney developed an interest in the Australian colony after the emigration of his brother John to New South Wales. Samuel and John established the magazine Sidney's Emigrant Journal, and worked together on two books concerning Australian emigration. The present work is an excellent description of Australia's contemporary state, where Samuel Sidney is clearly influenced by both Caroline Chisholm and Alexander Harris. He argues that the Australian colonies are ideal for working class emigration. Already in the introduction it becomes clear that Sidney is very anti-Wakefield, which makes it an important document in the debate between competing proposals for emigration. Apparently Sidney was very well-informed, he had access to otherwise inaccessible primary sources, and the verbatim transcripts add considerably to the book's value. Sidney's work is a full guide, giving excessive and detailed information on one of the most interesting world-regions."--Abebooks website.

The experience of modernization -- the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world -- and modernism in art, literature and architecture are brilliantly integrated in this account.