Henry Savery's was a life rich in potential moral lessons. He had, in the words of the minister who buried him, been born well but died without honor. The dramatist David Burn, who witnessed Savery prostrate on a stretcher with his throat poorly mended after a suicide attempt, was struck by the gap that separated this felon at Port Arthur from his origins "in the very first circles" and from his former "wealthy, dashing, gay associates." The sight awoke in Burn "sentiments of the deepest compassion mingled with horror and awe. There he lay, a sad--a solemn warning." Reconciling these verdicts with Savery's writing is not easy. Remembered as the author of the first book of local sketches published in Australia, The Hermit in Van Diemen's Land (1829), and the first Australian novel, Quintus Servinton: A Tale Founded upon Incidents of Real Occurrence (1830-1831), Savery gives in these works...