Table of Contents

Map

Introduction

1 Birth of a convict colony

2 Convicts in Britain and on the high seas

3 Convicts under assignment in Van Diemen's Land

4 Convicts after sentence

5 Convict and free

6 The transportation debate

7 The convict stigma

8 Initial efforts to defeat the convict stigma

9 Forgetting the past

10 For the Term of His Natural Life

11 The One Forbidden Subject

12 'A thing of which we may well feel proud'

13 Paving the way

14 Out in the open

Appendix 1: How many convicts left Van Diemen's Land?

Appendix 2: People mentioned in the text

Acknowledgements

Notes

Select bibliography

Index

About the Author

Dr Alison Alexander is a seventh-generation Australian, with convict ancestors in the first, second and third fleet. She was formerly a lecturer in history at the University of Tasmania, and is the editor of The Companion to Tasmanian History and the author of The Ambitions of Jane Franklin.