AustLit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

French-British civil engineer and writer Elim Henry D'Avigdor (1841-1895) wrote Antipodean Notes Collected on a Nine Months' Tour Round the World pseudonym "the Wanderer". It is a travel narrative with prose that is novelistic in form and written in the first person. Although he writes of his experiences in Adelaide and Melbourne, the majority of his Antipodean Notes are set in New Zealand. D'Avigdor commented on the cost and quality of fruit and vegetables, the weather, the streets, and also presented his opinion on James Froude and his Oceana (1886). D'Avigdor suggests that Froude's status as an eminent and popular historian, with connections to colonial elites, heavily influenced the vision of the colonies he received and then published, and is particularly critical of Froude's negative comments about New Zealand. D'Avigdor wrote for the Pall Mall Gazette (often under his pseudonym) and published many works including Fair Diana (1884), Notes on the Caucasus (1883), and A Loose Rein (1887).