For the Term of His Natural Life

by Marcus Clarke




DEDICATION

TO

SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY

My Dear Sir Charles, I take leave to dedicate this work to you,
not merely because your nineteen years of political and literary life
in Australia render it very fitting that any work written
by a resident in the colonies, and having to do with the history
of past colonial days, should bear your name upon its dedicatory page;
but because the publication of my book is due to your advice
and encouragement.

The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning
or at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end
to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim interest
by reason of an equally unintelligible love of crime acquired
during his experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn
the interior of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo
has shown how a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence.
But no writer--so far as I am aware--has attempted to depict
the dismal condition of a felon during his term of transportation.