Rod Howard’s historical biography explores the nearforgotten life of convict Henry Savery, whose thinly veiled fictional autobiography Quintus Servinton was Australia’s first novel. Hailing from a once-grand Bristol family, Savery was charged with minor forgery and confronted with the death penalty, but through distant social connections secured a reprieve of deportation. Hampered by lack of documentation, Rod Howard’s descriptions of Savery’s life in Britain oscillate between unsubstantiated conjecture and prosaic legal reporting. The book hits its stride, however, with Savery’s arrival in Van Diemen’s Land in 1825, where he was initially employed by the colonial treasurer and afforded several advantages. Howard’s descriptions are gothically visceral; Tasmania comes to life as a primitive, dilapidated colony, where Savery’s fellow convicts direct an embryonic form of Australian tall-poppy syndrome towards his privileged circumstances. Howard offers a sympathetic portrait of a man in turns blessed and cursed by fate: a devoted but cuckolded husband and an ambitious writer of limited talent. Ultimately, however, he is revealed as a pathetic figure, incapable of reform. His social-climbing instincts and undirected intelligence could not save him from an ignominious end. This book will appeal to readers interested in Australian historical fiction and the convict era, and those who enjoyed The Secret River.
Veronica Sullivan is a Melbourne bookseller and creative writing student. This review first appeared in the October issue of Bookseller+Publisher magazine.
