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Phase
1788–1868 CE
Transportation to Australia began with the First Fleet in 1788 and became a major form of punishment for British and Irish convicts. It followed the disruption of transportation to the American colonies. Convicts were sent across the world to penal settlements that grew into colonial societies.
Transportation mattered because it turned criminal sentences into forced migration and empire-building. It separated families, transformed Indigenous lands and created new colonial hierarchies. The system linked Georgian courts and prisons to the other side of the world.
This setting supports novels about convicts, guards, sailors, colonial officials, Indigenous communities and families divided by law. It can connect Georgian crime fiction to Australian historical sagas and penal-colony narratives. Series can begin in London or provincial courts and continue through the voyage, settlement, survival and attempts at reinvention.
Series
To the Ends of the Earth follows Edmund Talbot, a well-connected young Englishman travelling to take up a colonial appointment in Australia during the Napoleonic era. The three novels are set aboard an ageing former warship crowded with naval officers, sailors, soldiers, emigrants and servants. Talbot begins the…
Books
Bestselling authors first, then star rating.
