Böcker av Alan Atkinson

A memoir about a father who lost his wife and three children in a terrible accident

A landmark and revealing joint biography of Elizabeth and John Macarthur, from one of Australia's most respected historians.Arriving in 1790, Elizabeth and John Macarthur, both aged 23, were the first married couple to travel voluntarily from Europe to Australia, within three years of the initial invasion. John Macarthur soon became famous in New South Wales and beyond as a wool pioneer, a politician, and a builder of farms at Parramatta and Camden. For a long time, Elizabeth's life was regarded as contingent on John's and, more recently, John's on Elizabeth's.In Elizabeth and John, Alan Atkinson, prizewinning author of Europeans in Australia, draws on his work on the Macarthur family over the last 50 years to explore the dynamics of a strong and sinewy marriage, and family life over two generations. With the truth of John and Elizabeth Macarthur's relationship much more complicated and more deeply human than other writers have suggested, Atkinson provides a finely drawn portrait of a powerful partnership.'Elizabeth and John is a truly amazing work of history. A triumph. This is historical scholarship at its dazzling best. Beautifully produced and written, Alan Atkinson's intimate portrait of Elizabeth and John Macarthur's marriage also opens windows on to the wider worlds of 18th century England, the European Enlightenment and early New South Wales during the years of the British invasion and occupation. Attentive to his subjects' inner selves and sensibilities and the imperatives of an imperial and patriarchal order, Atkinson's book is truly a tour de force.' - Marilyn Lake

High Lean Country captures the rich history and haunting character of the New England region of northern New South Wales.The authors explore how memory - of land, of family, of patterns of life on the other side of the world - has influenced the identity of New England. They also consider how the high country itself has shaped its people and their sense of regional uniqueness. In doing so, this book sets a new direction for understanding Australia as a whole.Weaving together the histories of human settlement, economic, social and cultural development, as well as interactions with the environment, High Lean Country shows how colonial settlers strived for decades to literally create a new England. It traces the story of the graduates of Oxford and Cambridge who turned their hands to sheep husbandry and developed a squattocracy, the establishment of schools and other institutions, and the cultivation of traditional arts. It also examines the early colonial bushranging period, and a history of not always friendly relations between white settlers and the local Aboriginal population.A project of the Heritage Futures Research Centre at the University of New England, High Lean Country is a fascinating study of this distinctive Australian high country.

During the period from around 1815 to the early 1870s Australia began to find its place. The pace of colonial expansion accelerated while a kind of democracy emerged. More than a story of geography and politics, this title describes the way people thought and felt - what drove them, what troubled them.

The first of three volumes in the award winning series The Europeans in Australia, available together for the first time, gives an account of early settlement by Britain that began during the 1780s, a decade of extraordinary creativity and the climax of the European Enlightenment.