Alan Frost

Lord Sydney: The Life and Times of Tommy Townshend

But it is just one of many occasions in this book where the reader is required to do more than her share in the work of communication. Faults appear, too, in Joel’s presentation of primary material. Some are simple carelessness*words are missing from quotations, or wrongly transcribed, making the meaning opaque. Some suggest a lack of discrimination*too often Joel includes the whole of a quotation, distracting attention from the matter at hand with irrelevancies. Some are misleading*several times Joel presents two quotations from different letters, even from different years, as if they came from a single source, separating them only with an ellipsis. And some suggest sheer failure of comprehension. In one place Joel misinterprets Franklin’s rhetorical language as a direct criticism of British policy, then goes on to say that Franklin’s antireformist stance in this instance is not only ‘baffling’ but ‘morally at least, an affront to the doctrines of the reform movement to which he subscribed’ (201 2). (It isn’t, and it is hard to see why Joel was baffled.) None of these faults is a major problem on its own, but their cumulative effect is to induce a sense of mistrust in the author’s information, and ultimately in his analysis. This is a pity, because overall the wealth of research in this book certainly helps elucidate a fascinating and important historical moment.

Terra Australis to Australia

Ever since classical times, when men first imagined a great continent in the southern hemisphere, the idea of Terra Australis has kept a firm hold on European imaginations. This volume gives a comprehensive history of the various theories and speculations that occupied the minds of Europeans, and describes the expeditions and discoveries achieved by British, Portuguese and Dutch explorers. The Dieppe maps, which first marked the continent of Australia as a Portuguese discovery, are reproduced in their entirety for the first time. Two final chapters cover the reality of New South Wales and the emergence of the continent.