AustLit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

Nat Gould (Nathaniel) (1857-1919) was journalist, editor, novelist and prolific writer of Australian sporting fiction. After emigrating to Brisbane in 1884, Gould and his family relocated to Sydney, before moving back to England in 1895. Gould was encouraged by friends and family to publish his travel narrative, and Town and Bush became one of this three autobiographical accounts. Gould prefaced the work by stating that the book had no pretensions to historical value, and that it was not intended as a guidebook, but rather a description of experiences as a journalist working in the Southern Hemisphere. Written in a conversational manner, Gould provides illustrations of Queensland, the beautiful dark side of Sydney, marvelous Melbourne, the races, literature, politics and art as well as the Australian press. On top of his over 100 novels, Gould wrote two more auto-biographic non-fiction pieces, On and Off the Turf in Australia (1895) and The Magic of Sport, mainly autobiographical (1909).