AustLit

Barron Field arrived in Australia in 1816 to serve as judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. In 1819 the government printer published Field's First Fruits of Australian Poetry which contained two poems and is generally regarded as the first book of poetry to be published in Australia. Field's poetic descriptions of native flora and fauna have not been well received, but as some critics have shown they exhibit Field's difficulty in employing northern hemisphere romanticism to describe the antipodes.

Field was known as a literary critic in England and was a close friend of Charles Lamb. His other works include a memoir of Lamb, a collection of verse, Spanish Sketches and two editions of Thomas Heywood's plays. A translation of Spanish Sketches by Dennis Davison was published in Margin no.25, 1991 pp.[21-37].