AustLit

'Barron Field, who is today a largely forgotten figure, was from 1817 to 1824 the highest judge in New South Wales. His place in literary history rests on his First Fruits of Australian Poetry of 1819, which, as the title announces, was the first book of poetry to be published in this country. But by most accounts Field was a mediocre judge and a worse poet. John McLaren writes of the legal career that ‘Field’s record as a judge could best be described as mercurial, a reflection of his conservative belief system, a commitment to the culture of English law, and an opportunistic streak in his character…. Field’s counsel was not invariably sound or in keeping with the Colonial Office’s understanding of the legal proprieties’ (144). As for his poetry, even the colonial anthologists were wary of Field’s inclusion, although Vivian Smith has more recently been generous enough to judge Field’s poem ‘The Kangaroo’ to be ‘an exuberant oddity’ (74). Field also appears in a number of historical studies of colonial science and culture, where he tends however to remain a minor and rather ambiguous figure (Bernard Smith; Carter).' (Introduction)