Just Tassie Books

The third and final volume in Clifford Craig's trilogy of Tasmanian colonial print references — following The Engravers of Van Diemen's Land (1961) and Old Tasmanian Prints (1964). Where the earlier volumes focused on prints prepared outside Tasmania, this volume continues Craig's systematic cataloguing of the visual record of Van Diemen's Land and Tasmania as represented through colonial-era engraving and illustration.

A collection of petitions, memorials and letters from the convict colony of Van Diemen's Land, gathered and transcribed by Eustace FitzSymonds from original documents held in colonial archives, with numerous pages reproduced in facsimile directly from the manuscripts. The documents are the voices of the convict system itself — petitions for mercy, memorials requesting tickets of leave, letters of complaint and protest, correspondence between convicts and colonial administrators.