Eileen Chanin
University of New South Wales
The Celebrated George Barrington, A Spurious Author; the Book Trade, and Botany Bay, by Nathan Garvey (Sydney: Hordern House, 2008, pp. 327, AU$64.00hb).
Publisher's website: http://www.hordern.com/publications/the-celebrated-eorge-barrington.aspx
Many readers from the late eighteenth century gained their first impressions of New South Wales from bogus stories issued in a publishing scam. Publishers assembled and released these over many years under the name of a celebrated thief, George Barrington. Historians ignored the many Barrington publications because they were fictitious; Nathan Garvey shows what can be learned from them.
Barrington was born in 1755, the son of artisans from the Irish county of Kildare. Born as George Waldron, Barrington's transformations fascinated and scandalised late eighteenth century British society. In a society that set great store on dress, manners and deportment, elegantly dressed Barrington passed himself off as genteel and educated.
Posing as a debonair gentleman, Barrington defied the social stratifications of the day. As a pickpocket, he plied his trade in high circles. At Covent-garden Theatre in 1775, Barrington re¬lieved Russian Count Gregory Orlov of a diamond snuff-box that came from Catherine the Great, reputed to be worth £30 000. Barrington escaped arrest for pocketing the box, partly because he defended himself with an ingenuity and ability that was reputed to rival any distin¬guished advocate at the bar.
Celebrated in the press as the 'Prince of Pickpockets', Barrington mocked society's norms. Eluding authorities many times, he became something of a folk hero. Ultimately he was convicted in 1790 for stealing a gold watch and chain and was transported to Botany Bay.
He transformed again when he subdued a mutiny that broke out on board his transport ship. On arrival in Sydney in August 1791 he served on the Night Watch policing Sydney streets and became superintendant of convicts from late 1792. He settled in Parramatta and became a small farmer and a friend of the evangelical clergyman, Samuel Marsden. Barrington died in December 1804 when aged 47 and insane.
If he found redemption in New South Wales, Barrington also discovered that the first convict account of the penal settlement was published in London under his name. The master thief found his name was stolen many times by opportunistic book-sellers in England cashing in on popular interest in the new colony. How better to market details of the convict colony than under the name of one of Britain's outlaws?
The first of these appropriations was A Voyage to New South Wales issued in London in 1795. Paternoster Row bookseller Henry Delahay Symonds knew the public interest in Barrington, having published an account of Barrington's trial in 1790. Symonds seized on Barrington's new incarnation as a public official in Sydney. Under Barrington's name, Symonds reworked an account of the colony with text 'borrowed' from a First Fleet journal. He mixed parts of John Hunter's
1792 An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island with mater¬ial from other 1790s travels. Symonds issued this account which, as Nathan Garvey notes, was 'a cleverly structured mix of plagiarism and fiction that represented the supposed author in the guise of an authoritative travel writer and historian of the infant colony'.
Barrington's literary transformation occurred despite never writing this instant bestseller nor the many further works that were subsequently attributed to him. Barrington's name became a brand. Symonds' commercial acumen was demonstrated by the number of publications attributed to Barrington which rolled off the presses in, as Garvey puts it, 'a dizzying number of republica¬tions, translations and adaptations'. The master-thief became the victim of 'acts of fabrication, intellectual transgression and commercial opportunism'.
Garvey focuses on the legend that surrounded Barrington and resulted in the 'Barrington' publications. The Barrington phenomenon was first forged 'in the crucible of a scandal-hungry newspaper press' before 'broadening into a phenomenon of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular publishing.' Garvey considers there is much to learn from Barrington's story about the print culture of the age and how that culture shaped history. This is the theme to Garvey's exem¬plary study. He tracks down the origins of the bogus Barrington stories and explores how and why the first 1795 publication was altered to suit different markets and readers. Versions were 'translated', modified and reprinted many times. Unhindered by copyright laws, publishers pirated, plagiarised and forged official reports of the colony. They enlivened these - even adding fictional adventures - under Barrington's name to satisfy a growing readership for popular narratives.
Three chapters and a 90-page bibliography constitute Garvey's book. He begins by outlining Barrington's rise to notoriety and emphasises the role the newspaper press played in creating Barrington's public persona. The second chapter covers the publishing history of the Barrington biographies that speedily followed Barrington's 1790 conviction. Garvey considers how oppor¬tunistic booksellers cashed in on Barrington's notoriety to issue republications for nearly forty years. The third chapter examines how publishers applied Barrington's name to further narratives following the initial 1795 Voyage. By considering the individuals who were responsible, Garvey addresses the changing book trade at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Garvey unearths a chronology for the texts that were produced, besides textual relations between different publications. He provides this in a comprehensive bibliography of the Barrington books published between 1790 and 1840. With useful references, this offers rich insight into early Australian books and late Georgian popular literature.
Looking beyond the questionable ethics of popular publishing during late Georgian times, Garvey situates the Barrington publishing history in the changing nature of print culture during the period. His account adds to histories of the book and of the culture of popular publishing in the Romantic period. It is also relevant to cultural history in terms of how the celebrity influ¬ences the cultural object.