AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Notes
-
Author's note: It will be remembered that, a few years back, a party of stockmen (several of whom were afterwards executed for the crime) made wholesale massacre of a small tribe of defenceless Blacks, to the number, it is believed, of more than a score, heaping their bodies as they slaughtered them, upon a large fire kindled for the purpose. Of this doomed tribe, one woman only, with her infant, as it appeared subsequently on evidence, escaped the Whiteman's vengeance. And this woman, after having fled to a considerable distance from the scene of the massacre, and when wearied and overtaken by the night is supposed to make the following lament.
(This note is from the Weekly Register. It appears, with slight variations, in The Bushrangers, a Play in Five Acts, and Other Poems (1853) and in The Poetical Works of Charles Harpur (1984).)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Eliza Hamilton Dunlop's 'The Aboriginal Mother' : Romanticism, Anti Slavery and Imperial Feminism in the Nineteenth Century
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue vol. 11 no. 1 2011; (p. 1-12) 'This paper positions the work of colonial poet Eliza Hamilton Dunlop amongst international Romantic poetry of the period, and argues that Dunlop's poetry reflects a transposition of Romantic women's poetry to Australia. Dunlop's poetry, such as 'The Aboriginal Mother', demonstrates the relationship of Romantic women's poetry to early feminism and Social Reform. As with the work of Felicia Hemans, Dunlop was interested in the role of women, and the 'domestic' as they related to broader national and political concerns. Dunlop seems to have been consciously applying the tropes, such as that of the mother, of anti slavery poetry found within American, British, and international poetic traditions to the Australian aboriginal context. Themes of indigenous motherhood, and also of Sati or widow burning in India, and human rights had been favored by early women's rights campaigners in Britain from the 1820s, focusing on abolition of slavery through the identification of white women with the Negro mother. Dunlop's comparative sympathy for the situation of aboriginals in Australia has been given critical attention as the aspect which makes her work valuable. However, in this essay I hope to outline how Dunlop's poetry fits in to the international context of the engagement of Romantic women poets with Western Imperialist models and colonial Others.' (Author's abstract)
-
Sense and Nonsense
1989
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Literature and the Aborigine in Australia 1770- 1975 1989; (p. 91-112)
-
Eliza Hamilton Dunlop's 'The Aboriginal Mother' : Romanticism, Anti Slavery and Imperial Feminism in the Nineteenth Century
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue vol. 11 no. 1 2011; (p. 1-12) 'This paper positions the work of colonial poet Eliza Hamilton Dunlop amongst international Romantic poetry of the period, and argues that Dunlop's poetry reflects a transposition of Romantic women's poetry to Australia. Dunlop's poetry, such as 'The Aboriginal Mother', demonstrates the relationship of Romantic women's poetry to early feminism and Social Reform. As with the work of Felicia Hemans, Dunlop was interested in the role of women, and the 'domestic' as they related to broader national and political concerns. Dunlop seems to have been consciously applying the tropes, such as that of the mother, of anti slavery poetry found within American, British, and international poetic traditions to the Australian aboriginal context. Themes of indigenous motherhood, and also of Sati or widow burning in India, and human rights had been favored by early women's rights campaigners in Britain from the 1820s, focusing on abolition of slavery through the identification of white women with the Negro mother. Dunlop's comparative sympathy for the situation of aboriginals in Australia has been given critical attention as the aspect which makes her work valuable. However, in this essay I hope to outline how Dunlop's poetry fits in to the international context of the engagement of Romantic women poets with Western Imperialist models and colonial Others.' (Author's abstract)
-
Sense and Nonsense
1989
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Literature and the Aborigine in Australia 1770- 1975 1989; (p. 91-112)