The Fatal Shore. by Hughes, Robert

Knopf, NY, 1987. ‘Sixth Printing, March 1987'. Hard Cover. xvi p., [10] p. of maps, 688 p., index, plates; 24 cm. ‘The missing element in most accounts of the System has been the voices of the convicts themselves. The System left a mountain of official paper behind it. We hear a great deal from the administrators, the witnesses in the select committees, the parsons, the jailers, the masters; from the convicts themselves, very little. Accordingly I have tried, as far as possible, to see the System from below, through convicts' testimony-- in letters, depositions, petitions and memoirs-- about their own experiences. Much of this material is hitherto unpublished, and much more awaits study. It turns out that one common assumption is quite wrong: far from being a mute mass, the convicts did have a voice, or rather many voices. This book is largely about what they tell us of their suffering and survival, their aspiration and resistance, their fear of exile and their reconciliation to the once-unimagined land they and their children would claim as their own.' Stock# 34,490. Vg/ dj good+, a bit worn; . .