Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

, given its small geographic size and population has a strong literary culture. Historically Tasmania provides an interesting literary background with visits from early European explorers such as the Dutchman Abel Tasman

Abel Tasman

Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the VOC . His was the first known European expedition to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands...

, the Frenchmen Bruni d'Entrecasteaux

Bruni d'Entrecasteaux

Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d'Entrecasteaux was a French navigator who explored the Australian coast in 1792 while seeking traces of the lost expedition of La Pérouse....

 and Marion du Fresne and then the English explorers Matthew Flinders

Matthew Flinders

Captain Matthew Flinders RN was one of the most successful navigators and cartographers of his age. In a career that spanned just over twenty years, he sailed with Captain William Bligh, circumnavigated Australia and encouraged the use of that name for the continent, which had previously been...

 and George Bass

George Bass

George Bass was a British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia.-Early years:He was born on 30 January 1771 at Aswarby, a hamlet near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the son of a tenant farmer, George Bass, and a local beauty named Sarah Nee Newman. His father died in 1777 when Bass was 6...

. The colonisation of Tasmania was characterised by deteriorated relations with the indigenous Aboriginal people and a harsh convict heritage. These early elements of Tasmanian history are found both in the large number of colonial sandstone buildings and in the place names. Environmentally, Tasmania's picturesque landscapes and changeable weather, provide a vivid pictorial backdrop to Tasmanian literary culture. Tasmania's geographical isolation, proximity to Antarctica, controversial colonial past and status as an island state are some of the characteristically 'Tasmanian' themes found in the island's literature.

Currently, many authors call Tasmania home, and there is a growing number of titles set in Tasmania or by Tasmanians. There are also two literary publications of note including the quarterly Island

Island magazine

Island Magazine is a quarterly literary publication "with an environmental heart" that provides a formum for Tasmanian writers and writers from around Australia to publish new work.Island is a not-for-profit incorporated body run by a Board of management....

magazine and the bi-annual Famous Reporter. The Tasmanian government provides some arts funding in the form of prizes, events and grants, while local bookshops often host book launches or other literary events. The Tasmanian literary scene also includes children's books such as Tiger Tale

Tiger Tale

Tiger Tale is a children's picture book illustrated by Marion Isham and written by Steve Isham. First published in 2002, the book retells the Aboriginal story of how the Tasmanian Tiger got its stripes. Tiger Tale is illustrated using torn paper collage that gives the book a folkloric...

.

Tasmania's unique history and environment also gave rise to Tasmanian Gothic

Tasmanian Gothic

Tasmanian Gothic is an artistic and literary genre that merges the traditions of Gothic Literature with the history and natural features of Tasmania.-Origins:...

 literature during the 19th century.

Notable Tasmanian authors and poets

• Nan Chauncy
  Nan Chauncy
  Nan Chauncy was a British-born Australian author of children's books.-Early life:Chauncy was born Nancen Beryl Masterman in Northwood, Middlesex, England and emigrated to Tasmania, Australia with her family in 1912, when her engineer father was offered a job with the Hobart City Council. She...
  
  
• Marcus Clarke
  Marcus Clarke
  Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke was an Australian novelist and poet, best known for his novel For the Term of his Natural Life.- Biography :...
  
  
• "Tasma" (Jessie Couvreur)
  Jessie Catherine Couvreur
  Jessie Catherine Couvreur was an Australian novelist.Jessie Catherine Couvreur was born at Highgate, London. Her father, Alfred James Huybers, came originally from Antwerp, and his daughter was of Dutch, French and English descent. She arrived in Tasmania with her parents in December 1852 and was...
  
  
• Stephen Edgar (Poet)
• Richard Flanagan
  Richard Flanagan
  Richard Flanagan is a novelist from Tasmania, Australia.-Early life:Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961, the fifth of six children. He is descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s. His father is a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. One of his three...
  
  
• Martin Flanagan
• Christopher Koch
  Christopher Koch
  Christopher John Koch, AO, Australian novelist, was born in Hobart in 1932. He has twice won the Miles Franklin Award. In 1995 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for contribution to Australian literature....
  
  
• Amanda Lohrey
  Amanda Lohrey
  Amanda Francis Lillian Lohrey, , in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) is a writer, and novelist. She completed her education at the University of Tasmania before taking up a scholarship at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. From 1988 to 1994 she lectured in writing and textual studies at the...
  
  
• Louisa Ann Meredith
• Clive Sansom
  Clive Sansom
  -Life and work:Sansom was born on 21 June 1910 in East Finchley, London and educated at Southgate County School, where he matriculated in 1926. He worked as a clerk until 1934, and then studied speech and drama at the Regent Street Polytechnic and the London Speech Institute under Margaret Gullan...
  
  
• Katherine Scholes
  Katherine Scholes
  Katherine Anne Scholes is an Australian writer. She was born in the Dodoma Region of Tanzania where her parents were English missionaries, and spent most of her childhood there before moving to England and then Tasmania....
  
  
• Margaret Scott
• Rachael Treasure
  Rachael Treasure
  Rachael Treasure is an Australian journalist, sheep dog breeder and trainer, author and bestselling novelist She resides with her husband and children on a sheep farm at Runnymede near the small Tasmanian farming community of Levendale, where they breed and train kelpies, border collies and waler...
  
  
• Reverend John West
• Danielle Wood

Notable Tasmanian books

• History of Tasmania, 1852, by the Reverend John West
• Notes and Sketches of New South Wales, 1844 by Louisa Ann Meredith
• My Residence in Tasmania, 1852, by Louisa Anne Meredith
• Bush Friends in Tasmania, 1860 and 1891, by Louisa Anne Meredith
• For the Term of His Natural Life
  For the Term of his Natural Life
  For the Term of His Natural Life, written by Marcus Clarke, was published in the Australian Journal between 1870 and 1872 , appearing as a novel in 1874. It is the best known novelisation of life as a convict in early Australian history...
  
  by Marcus Clarke
• Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill, 1889 by "Tasma"
• Out of Ireland by Christopher Koch
• The Sound of One Hand Clapping by Richard Flanagan

Tasmanian Literary Awards

• Tasmania Book Prize
• Margaret Scott Prize
• University of Tasmania Prize

See also

• Music in Tasmania
• Geography of Tasmania
  Geography of Tasmania
  The geography of Tasmania is rugged and varied. Tasmania is an island of temperate climate, so similar in some ways to pre-industrial England that it was referred to by some English colonists as "a Southern England". The bigger settlements are however located in regions where the rainfall is much...
  
  
• List of Australian novelists
• List of Australian poets

Further reading

• Robson, L. L. (1983). A History of Tasmania. Volume I. Van Diemen's Land From the Earliest Times to 1855. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-554364-5.
• Robson, L. L. (1991). A History of Tasmania. Volume II. Colony and State From 1856 to the 1980s. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-553031-4.

External links

• Tasmanian Writers' Centre
• Island—a Tasmanian literary magazine