A Letter from Sydney, the Principal Town of Australasia. Together with the Outline of a System of colonization

1829 [Wakefield, Edward Gibbon] (1796-1862). A Letter from Sydney, the Principal Town of Australasia. Together with the Outline of a System of colonization. Ed. Robert Gouger. London: Joseph Cross/Simpkin and Marshall/Effingham Wilson. 222 pp. plus a foldout map and an “Appendix. Outline of a System of Colonization” separately paged as i-xxiv. Written as if he had been there, but at the time of publication, he had not, and he was actually in prison in England.

Some damning of the settlement process, particularly convict labor and the quality of some of the other immigrants. Shows the difficulty of working the land. Objections to the provincialism of the politics. But he sees Australia with a positive future, an “extension of Britain” that could be settled by young men and women, sent in equal numbers, which would reduce what he saw as the too-rapid growth of the population in Britain. Treated as a eutopia in Matthew Graves and Elizabeth Rechniewski. “Essays for an Empty Land: Australia as Political Utopia.” Cultures of the Commonwealth 17 (Winter 2010-2011): 37-51. Much later the author settled in New Zealand.