Fiction

Her husband was controversial. He was in the press, in the courts and in prison. Her husband was charismatic, voluble and irrepressible. He survived shipwreck, ruin and slander. Her husband was an entrepreneur, industrialist and pioneer. We continue to drink his beer; we still attend his theatre. His legacy is concrete. His place in history is secure.

But this is not his story, but the imagined story of his wife, Sophia Degraves.

'Is marriage just a series of texts about where the children are and whether we need milk until one of you dies?'

A tragedy tears an aspiring London musician's life apart. Many years later he is discovered reluctantly performing in a remote Tasmanian pub and is forced to confront his past.

An old 1827 Tasmanian satire reproduced in 2000 by Red Neck Comics with text by Barry Jessup with illustrations by Simon Barnard.