AustLit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

James Francis Hogan, M.P., (1855-1924) was a teacher, journalist, author and politician. Hogan published several works of historical fiction including The Lost Explorer (1890), The Irish in Australia (1887), The Australian in London and America (1889), and biographies including The Convict King Jorgen Jorgenson (1891) and Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke (1893). Hogan’s travel narrative The Sister Dominions was an account of his journey from Canada to Australia via the Pacific. In Australia, Hogan recounted political, religious, theatrical, and literary histories of Sydney and Melbourne, and concluded with a section on Australian facts and prospects. Although descriptive, the work was not written in a personal tone. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography the strongest of Hogan’s works were The Sister Dominions and the Lowe biography, as the others were somewhat superficial and the fictional works were marred by melodrama: “as a writer Hogan was a conscientious and competent journalist but his creative work was not outstanding”.