SOURCE: “Kingsley's Geoffry Hamlyn: A Study in Literary Survival,” in Southerly, Vol. 32, No. 4, December, 1972, pp. 243-54.

In the following essay, Wilkes observes that the enduring quality of Geoffry Hamlyn lies in Kingsley's mythic treatment of the Australian landscape in the novel.

Of all the Australian novels that have achieved a reputation, Henry Kingsley's The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn is among the least demanding. “He has his brother's power of describing”, Alexander Macmillan wrote in 1858, giving his impressions of the manuscript, “but he does not write in the same style at all; it is wonderfully quiet and yet powerful—a kind of lazy strength which is very charming; some of the characters too are drawn with a masterly hand”.¹ This impression of leisureliness is still the dominant one given by the book. Published in 1859, it went into a second edition within a year, and was later described by Marcus...