SOURCE: Healy, J. J. “The Treatment of the Aborigine in Early Australian Fiction, 1840-70.” Australian Literary Studies 5, no. 3 (May 1972): 233-53.

In the following essay, Healy surveys mid-nineteenth-century portrayals of Aborigines in Australian fiction, suggesting that the most impressive of these can be found in Charles de Boos's 1867 novel Fifty Years Ago.

In his Impressions of Australia Felix … Richard Howitt attacked the credibility of ‘Whited Sepulchre Emigration Books’. He expanded his comment:

Truth is unaccommodating—a stately walker on highways—not permitting any of that wandering in by-paths. … Fiction, like the Pope, is more liberal of her indulgences; any exaggeration is by her permitted for effect. Hers is the whole wealth of light and shade—the fine free hand, and the masterly touch. The hard outline softens before her; the formal relaxes; and over the most disagreeable objects hangs her veil, how gracefully! Her satire, and sprightly sallies of...