AustLit

'The 1940 discovery in a disused flour mill on the outskirts of Hobart of the entire archive of the local Derwent Bank, from its founding in 1828 until its closure and liquidation, 1849–54, would thrill anyone with a historical bent, then or since. Archivists, on the other hand, might gasp at the somewhat chancy handling of the collection before what remained finally reached safe haven in the University of Tasmania archives. But at least it escaped the recycled paper drive of wartime Australia that induced the indiscriminate culling of some records, official as well as private. Eleanor Robin writes about the archive’s discovery and subsequent mining by historians and others in an absorbing introduction to this biography, which seeks to reinstate Charles Swanston (1789–1850) in Australian historical memory.' (Introduction)