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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'From one of Australia's foremost journalists, Luke Slattery, comes a bravura literary achievement, a rich and intense novel of an imagined history of desire, ambition and dashed dreams, and a portrait of one passionate, unforgettable woman - Elizabeth Macquarie.
'Elizabeth Macquarie, widow of the disgraced former Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, is in mourning - not only for her husband, but the loss of their shared dream to transform the penal colony into a bright new world. Over the course of one long sleepless night on the windswept isle of Mull, she remembers her life in that wild and strange country; a revolution of ideas as dramatic as any in history; and her dangerous alliance with the brilliant, mercurial Francis Greenway, the colony's maverick architect.
'A stirring, provocative and thrilling novel of passion, ideas, reforming zeal and desire.'
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Notes
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Epigraph: For we are, all of us, small men. But in this new world we may become giants. - Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
There's an old story...which may or may not be true. - Euripides, Helen
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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Reflections
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 399 2018; (p. 36)''Mrs M’ is the second wife of Lachlan Macquarie, governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821. Luke Slattery explains in his Author’s Note the impulse behind his novel – Elizabeth Macquarie’s voice coming to him, romantically, in a dream. It was not quite unprompted. He had been visiting her home territory in the Hebrides, having already written a short book about the Macquaries’ last years in New South Wales (The First Dismissal [2014]). But this book is different; and it is Slattery’s first novel.' (Introduction)
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City Rises from Fanciful Triangle
2017
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9 December 2017; (p. 20)
— Review of Mrs. M : An Imagined History 2017 single work novel'When I lived in Sydney, one of my favourite places was Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, a stony seat cut into a promontory beyond the Royal Botanic Garden with a view from the Opera House and Harbour Bridge past Fort Denison and on towards the harbour heads. The land’s edge there has no boardwalks, no neatly set seawalls.' (Introduction)
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City Rises from Fanciful Triangle
2017
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9 December 2017; (p. 20)
— Review of Mrs. M : An Imagined History 2017 single work novel'When I lived in Sydney, one of my favourite places was Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, a stony seat cut into a promontory beyond the Royal Botanic Garden with a view from the Opera House and Harbour Bridge past Fort Denison and on towards the harbour heads. The land’s edge there has no boardwalks, no neatly set seawalls.' (Introduction)
-
Reflections
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , March no. 399 2018; (p. 36)''Mrs M’ is the second wife of Lachlan Macquarie, governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821. Luke Slattery explains in his Author’s Note the impulse behind his novel – Elizabeth Macquarie’s voice coming to him, romantically, in a dream. It was not quite unprompted. He had been visiting her home territory in the Hebrides, having already written a short book about the Macquaries’ last years in New South Wales (The First Dismissal [2014]). But this book is different; and it is Slattery’s first novel.' (Introduction)
