AustLit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

Thomas Godwin, author of A Descriptive Account of Van Diemen's Island (1821), presents an enlarged and more comprehensive version of that text in his Godwin's Emigrant's Guide to Van Diemen's Land (1823). The preface stated the practical intention of the work was that it pointed out the "mode of application for free grants of land", advising people "in every step that is necessary" on the details of the passage. The work was dedicated to "all persons intending to emigrate." Godwin's text presented the colony of Van Diemen’s Land in a particularly favourable light, specifically noting that it had "the most salubrious and congenial climate of any in the known world .... where almost every part of a country is equally inviting to emigrants" (1-2). Godwin's work was subject to opposition, however, as Edward Curr (in An Account of the Colony of Van Diemen's Land (1824)) stated that it contained "false and delusive assertions."