John Lang: Australia's Larrikin Writer, Barrister, Novelist, Journalist and Gentleman.(Australia Imagined: Views from the British Periodical Press 1800-1900)(Book review)

John Lang: Australia's Larrikin Writer, Barrister, Novelist, Journalist and Gentleman, by Victor Crittenden. Canberra: Mulini Press, 2005. Hardback, $50.

Australia Imagined: Views from the British Periodical Press 1800-1900, edited by Judith Johnston and Monica Anderson. Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2005. Paperback, $38.95.

In the first book of the John Lang Project, John Lang: Australia's Larrikin Writer, Barrister, Novelist, Journalist and Gentleman, author Victor Crittenden claims that Lang is 'the most important of our first novelists' (xii) because Lang wrote Australia's first 'international' bestseller, Violet the Danseuse. A Portraiture of Human Passion and Character (1836). Violet was written by a young Lang who had been dabbling in poetry and short stories for some time. While the novel enjoyed overseas success (it was reprinted in Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and the USA), Lang could not enjoy the success publicly because too many of the characters were suspiciously similar to colonial identities, not the least being his employers, the Wentworths. Lang even went so far as to name one protagonist D'Arcy (after William Charles Wentworth's father). …