Australia’s transported convicts have been studied by many writers. Some have been academics, some family and local historians, some by authors writing for a broad readership. Writers have differed in their interpretations of the convict era and its ongoing consequences. This lively debate shows no signs of ending, suggesting the topic still matters. Here is a selective list of such books. A few have already been mentioned in the ‘Notes and Sources’ to each chapter, but most have not.
Alexander, Alison, Tasmania’s Convict: How Felons Built a Free Society, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2010.
Atkinson, Alan, The Europeans in Australia, a History, Volume One. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997.
——The Europeans in Australia, a History, Volume Two. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Barnard, Simon, Convict Tattoos: Marked Men and Women of Australia, Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2016.
Cowley, Trudy and Snowden, Dianne, Patchwork Prisoners: The Rajah Quilt and the Women Who Made It, Hobart: Research Tasmania, 2013.
Daniels, Kay, Convict Women, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998.
Frost, Lucy and Maxwell-Stewart, Hamish, eds., Chain Letters: Narrating Convict Lives, Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 2001.
Hughes, Robert, The Fatal Shore, London: Collins Harvill, 1987.
Keneally, Thomas, The Commonwealth of Thieves, Sydney: Random House, 2005.
Levell, David, Tour to Hell: Convict Australia’s Great Escape Myths, St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2008.
Macklin, Robert, Dark Paradise: Norfolk Island—Isolation, savagery, mystery and murder, London: Hachette, 2013.
Nicholas, Stephen, ed., Convict Worker: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Oxley, Deborah, Convict Maids: The Forced Migration of Women to Australia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Rees, Siân, The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary Story of an eighteenth-century ship and its cargo of female convicts bound for Botany Bay, Sydney: Hodder, 2000.
Smith, Babette, A Cargo of Women: Susannah Watson and the Convicts of the Princess Royal, Sydney: UNSW Press, 1998; Rosenberg, 2005.
—— Australia’s Birthstain: The Startling Legacy of the Convict Era, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2008.
——The Luck of the Irish: How a Shipload of Convicts Survived the Wreck of the Hive to Make a New Life in Australia, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014.
Swiss, Deborah, The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia’s Convict Women, New York: Berkeley Books, 2010.