The Colonial Connection

Starting today in Shoalhaven, NSW, Australia:

29th – 31st May 2009: The Colonial Connection

A joint conference of the Australian Brontë Association and the NSW Dickens Society.
Location

Coolangatta Estate, Shoalhaven
4 star Historic Resort and Winery, near Berry

Key Speakers:

* Sandra Faulkner (Dickens and Australia)
* Susannah Fullerton (Mary Shelley, including her connections with Coolangatta)
* Roslyn Russell (NSW in 1820-1840, with a focus on the colonial diarist Annabella Boswell)
* Anne Collett (Alexander Harris, who wrote about life in NSW in the 1820s and 1830s, and who was one of Charlotte Brontë’s best loved writers)
Charlotte Brontë wrote, in one of her letters to W.S. Williams at Smith Elder & Co, that there are times when she’s so low that all she can read, apart from the Bible, is the writing of Alexander Harris. Among his works, published by her own publisher, Smith Elder & Co, are an autobiography Settlers and Convicts and a novel The Emigrant Family. Charlotte wrote warmly in praise of the novel and so it’s clear that she knew a lot more about life in NSW than we might have imagined.

More details about the talks can be read here.

Categories: Alert, Talks