Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration in British Literature and Art

257 Pages·2019·19.346 MB·English

by  Fariha Shaikh

Nineteenth-Century Settler
Emigration in British
Literature and Art
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Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture
Series Editor: Julian Wolfreys
Recent books in the series: Dickens and Demolition: Literary Allusion
Rudyard Kipling’s Fiction: Mapping Psychic and Urban Change in the Mid-Nineteenth
Spaces Century
Lizzy Welby Joanna Robinson
The Decadent Image: The Poetry of Wilde, Artful Experiments: Ways of Knowing in
Symons and Dowson Victorian Literature and Science
Kostas Boyiopoulos Philipp Erchinger
British India and Victorian Literary Culture Victorian Poetry and the Poetics of the
Máire ní Fhlathúin Literary Periodical
Caley Ehnes
Anthony Trollope’s Late Style: Victorian
Liberalism and Literary Form The Victorian Actress in the Novel and on
Frederik Van Dam the Stage
Renata Kobetts Miller
Dark Paradise: Pacifi c Islands in the
Nineteenth-Century British Imagination
Jenn Fuller Forthcoming volumes:
Twentieth-Century Victorian: Arthur Conan Her Father’s Name: Gender, Theatricality
Doyle and the Strand Magazine, 1891–1930 and Spiritualism in Florence Marryat’s
Jonathan Cranfi eld Fiction
Tatiana Kontou
The Lyric Poem and Aestheticism: Forms of
Modernity The Sculptural Body in Victorian Literature:
Marion Thain Encrypted Sexualities
Patricia Pulham
Gender, Technology and the New Woman
Lena Wånggren Olive Schreiner and the Politics of Print
Culture, 1883–1920
Self-Harm in New Woman Writing
Clare Gill
Alexandra Gray
Dickens’s Clowns: Charles Dickens, Joseph
Suffragist Artists in Partnership: Gender,
Grimaldi and the Pantomime of Life
Word and Image
Johnathan Buckmaster
Lucy Ella Rose
Victorian Auto/Biography: Problems in
Victorian Liberalism and Material Culture:
Genre and Subject
Synergies of Thought and Place
Amber Regis
Kevin A. Morrison
Culture and Identity in Fin-de-Siècle
The Victorian Male Body
Scotland: Romance, Decadence and the
Joanne-Ella Parsons and Ruth Heholt
Celtic Revival
Nineteenth-Century Settler Emigration in Michael Shaw
British Literature and Art
Gissing, Shakespeare and the Life
Fariha Shaikh
of Writing
The Pre-Raphaelites and Orientalism Thomas Ue
Eleonora Sasso
The Arabian Nights and Nineteenth Century
The Late-Victorian Little Magazine British Culture
Koenraad Claes Melissa Dickson
Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth The Aesthetics of Space in Nineteenth
Century Century British Literature, 1851–1908
Matthew Ingleby and Matt P. M. Kerr Giles Whiteley
For a complete list of titles published visit the Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture
web page at www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/ECVC
Also Available:
Victoriographies – A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing, 1790–1914, edited by Diane
Piccitto and Patricia Pulham
ISSN: 2044-2416
www.eupjournals.com/vic
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Nineteenth-Century Settler
Emigration in British
Literature and Art
Fariha Shaikh
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
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For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© Fariha Shaikh, 2018
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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Typeset in 11/13 Adobe Sabon by
IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and
printed and bound in Great Britain.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 3369 3 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 3371 6 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 3372 3 (epub)
The right of Fariha Shaikh to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
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Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements vii
Series Editor’s Preface ix
Introduction 1
1. Printed Emigrants’ Letters: Networks of Affect and
Authenticity 31
2. Emigrant Shipboard Newspapers: Provisional
Settlement at Sea 63
3. Fragmentary Aesthetics: Susanna Moodie and
Catharine Parr Traill in the Canadian Bush 95
4. Emigration Paintings: Visual Texts and Mobility 130
5. Emigration Aesthetics: Elizabeth Gaskell,
Charles Dickens and Catherine Helen Spence 161
Conclusion: Structures of Mobility 191
Bibliography 196
Index 235
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List of Illustrations
Figure 1: Sockett’s Introductory Lines for Mary Holden’s Letter,
King’s College London, Foyle Special Collections Library 53
Figure 2: Close-Up of Mast of the Alfred, State Library of
New South Wales, Mitchell Library, A1680 66
Figure 3: Sample First Page of an Issue of the Alfred, State
Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, A1680 67
Figure 4: Front Page of First Issue of the Open Sea, State
Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, A1645 69
Figure 5: ‘Engraving’ of Jeremy Diddler in the Open Sea,
State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, A1645 84
Figure 6: The Last of England, 1855, Ford Madox Brown,
oil on panel, 82.5 x 75 cm © Birmingham Museums Trust 134
Figure 7: The Emigrant’s Last Sight of Home, 1858, Richard
Redgrave. Purchased with assistance from an anonymous
donor 1977. Oil on canvas, 69.9 x 98.4 cm ©Tate,
London 2017 135
Figure 8: A Letter from the Colonies, 1852, Thomas Webster.
Presented by J. G. Milner 1986. Oil on wood, 41.3 x 52.1 cm,
©Tate, London 2017 141
Figure 9: Answering the Emigrant’s Letter, 1850, James
Collinson, oil on panel, 70.1 x 91.2 cm, Manchester Art
Gallery, UK / Bridgeman Images 145
Figure 10: Second Class – The Parting, 1854, Abraham
Solomon, oil on canvas, 76.3 x 54.5 cm, Southampton City
Art Gallery, Hampshire, UK / Bridgeman Images 152
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Acknowledgements
This book began as a doctoral project under the supervision of Pro-
fessor Josephine McDonagh at King’s College London. Without Jo’s
wisdom, encouragement and acute judgement, this project would not
have been possible, and I am profoundly grateful for her support of,
and belief in, me. Like many of the texts studied here, this book is a
mobile artefact: in moving from a doctoral project to monograph, it
has also moved between different countries and institutions. Professor
Nicholas Daly at University College Dublin was a wonderful mentor,
taking me out for tea and lunch whenever I needed it as I navigated
my own period of being an emigrant and coming to terms with my
new environment. The fi nal changes to this manuscript were made as
I joined the University of Birmingham and I am grateful to my new
colleagues for their warm welcome.
I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for
funding the initial research for this book, and to the Irish Research
Council for providing me with the time and resources I needed to
bring this project to fruition. An Australian Bicentennial Scholarship
from the Menzies Centre, King’s College London funded a research
trip to the Mitchell Library, Sydney, for the research which appears
in the second chapter of this book.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for
their permission to reproduce images from their collections. Every
effort has been made to trace copyright holders, but if any has been
inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to make the
necessary arrangement at the fi rst opportunity: Sockett’s Introduc-
tory Lines for Mary Holden’s Letter, King’s College London, Foyle
Special Collections Library; Sockett’s Introductory Lines for Mary
Holden’s Letter, King’s College London, Foyle Special Collections
Library; Sample First Page of an Issue of the Alfred, State Library
of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, A1680; Front Page of First
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viii Emigration in British Literature and Art
Issue of the Open Sea, State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell
Library, A1645; ‘Engraving’ of Jeremy Diddler in the Open Sea,
State Library of New South Wales, Mitchell Library, A1645; The
Emigrant’s Last Sight of Home, 1858, Richard Redgrave (b. 1804, d.
1888). Purchased with assistance from an anonymous donor 1977.
Oil on canvas, 69.9 x 98.4 cm ©Tate, London 2017; A Letter from
the Colonies, 1852, Thomas Webster (b. 1800, d. 1886). Presented
by J. G. Milner 1986. Oil on wood, 41.3 x 52.1 cm, ©Tate, London
2017; Answering the Emigrant’s Letter, 1850, James Collinson, oil
on panel, 70.1 x 91.2 cm, Manchester Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman
Images; Second Class – The Parting, 1854, Abraham Solomon, oil on
canvas, 76.3 x 54.5 cm, Southampton City Art Gallery, Hampshire,
UK / Bridgeman Images.
I owe enormous thanks to the people whose lives have crossed
with mine in the process of writing and researching this book.
Dublin was made a much happier time through the friendships of
Lara Atkin, Sarah Comyn, Treasa De Loughry, Alison Garden and
Grainne McEvoy. They give me reason again and again to go back to
Ireland. The guidance and support of Sharae Deckard and Fionnuala
Dillane throughout my time at UCD was invaluable. Valerie Norton
at UCD Humanities Institute was a warm and kind source of sup-
port throughout. Back home, James Grande, Ruth Livesey, Rebecca
Mitchell, Brian Murray, Matthew Rubery, Mark Turner and Cathy
Waters have always been on hand to answer any questions I have had.
Philip Aherne, Ellie Bass and Hannah Crummé keep me grounded
and my head above water when I need it the most.
To my siblings, who have made my life richer and fuller in myriad
ways, I’d be lost without you all. And, fi nally, to my parents whose
own multiple migrations I can only admire as they move from coun-
try to country, I have no words to express my thanks. For all of glo-
balisation’s advanced telecommunications and the collapsed sense of
time and distance, nothing can make up for the solid presence of your
touch. I dedicate this book to you both.
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Series Editor’s Preface
‘Victorian’ is a term, at once indicative of a strongly determined con-
cept and an often notoriously vague notion, emptied of all mean-
ingful content by the many journalistic misconceptions that persist
about the inhabitants and cultures of the British Isles and Victoria’s
Empire in the nineteenth century. As such, it has become a by-word
for the assumption of various, often contradictory habits of thought,
belief, behaviour and perceptions. Victorian studies and studies in
nineteenth-century literature and culture have, from their institu-
tional inception, questioned narrowness of presumption, pushed at
the limits of the nominal defi nition, and have sought to question
the very grounds on which the unrefl ective perception of the so-
called Victorian has been built; and so they continue to do. Victorian
and nineteenth-century studies of literature and culture maintain a
breadth and diversity of interest, of focus and inquiry, in an inter-
rogative and intellectually open-minded and challenging manner,
which are equal to the exploration and inquisitiveness of its subjects.
Many of the questions asked by scholars and researchers of the innu-
merable productions of nineteenth-century society actively put into
suspension the clichés and stereotypes of ‘Victorianism’, whether the
approach has been sustained by historical, scientifi c, philosophical,
empirical, ideological or theoretical concerns; indeed, it would be
incorrect to assume that each of these approaches to the idea of the
Victorian has been, or has remained, in the main exclusive, sealed
off from the interests and engagements of other approaches. A vital
interdisciplinarity has been pursued and embraced, for the most part,
even as there has been contest and debate amongst Victorianists, pur-
sued with as much fervour as the affi rmative exploration between
different disciplines and differing epistemologies put to work in the
service of reading the nineteenth century.
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