The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn

The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn is the first novel by Henry Kingsley, published in 1859. It is widely considered the first substantial Australian novel by an English writer and the book on which much of Kingsley’s reputation has rested. Kingsley had himself spent the years from 1853 to 1858 in Australia, working at various jobs in the colony of Victoria including a period as a stockman in the bush, and the novel is based on what he had seen there.

The story is told as the recollections of an older gentleman named Geoffry Hamlyn who has returned to England after many years in Australia. He looks back on the lives of a group of English families who emigrated to the colony in the 1830s and who built up large pastoral holdings in the country north of Port Phillip Bay. The novel covers a wide range of incident, including the original voyage out, the difficulties of establishing stations in remote country, the relations between settlers and the Aboriginal inhabitants, a long sequence involving bushrangers, and the various romantic and family stories that bind the characters together.

The novel is more than an adventure story. It is also a substantial picture of colonial Victoria in its early decades, with detailed observation of the landscape, the daily work of a pastoral station, the social relations among settlers, and the long shadow that England continued to throw over the lives of even the most committed emigrants. Some of the writing about Aboriginal characters is dated and reflects the assumptions of the period, but Kingsley is more careful than most of his contemporaries on this question and several Aboriginal figures are treated with individual attention.

The book runs about five hundred pages and was the most important English novel about Australia for many years after its publication. It influenced later Australian writers including Rolf Boldrewood, whose Robbery Under Arms shows clear debts to Kingsley. For readers wanting to see the beginning of a substantial English literary engagement with Australia, this is the essential book. It pairs naturally with The Hillyars and the Burtons, Kingsley’s later Australian novel, and with Robbery Under Arms.