The Dickens Boy

Product Description

The tenth child of Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn, had consistently proven unable 'to apply himself' to school or life. So he is sent, as his brother Alfred had been before him, at sixteen years of age, to Australia. This proving themselves exercise was not to take place in the burgeoning cities of Melbourne or Sydney, but in outback NSW, learning to become men from the most diverse and toughest of men.

Part of Dickens' motivation was to separate these younger of his children from the Dickens family schism, where Charles had expelled his wife from the family home, keeping her sister Georgie there to run the household, and taking up with the actress Ellen Tiernan.

Plorn arrived in Melbourne in late 1868 carrying a terrible secret. He has never read a word of his father's work. He is sent out to become a gentleman stockman on a 2000 square mile station in remotest, semi-arid parts of NSW. Here he inevitably gets enmeshed with Paakantji, colonists, colonial-born, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women.

Plorn, unexpectedly, encounters the same veneration of his father and familiarity with his work in Australia that was rampant in England. Against this backdrop, and featuring cricket tournaments, horse-racing, bushrangers, sheep droving, shifty stock and station agents, frontier wars and first encounters with Australian women, Plorn, meets extraordinary people and enjoys wonderful adventures as he works to prove himself.

This is Tom Keneally in his most familiar terrain. Taking historical figures and events and reimagining them with verve, compassion and humour. It is a triumph.The tenth child of Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn, had consistently proven unable 'to apply himself' to school or life. So he is sent, as his brother Alfred had been before him, at sixteen years of age, to Australia. This proving themselves exercise was not to take place in the burgeoning cities of Melbourne or Sydney, but in outback NSW, learning to become men from the most diverse and toughest of men.

Part of Dickens' motivation was to separate these younger of his children from the Dickens family schism, where Charles had expelled his wife from the family home, keeping her sister Georgie there to run the household, and taking up with the actress Ellen Tiernan.

Plorn arrived in Melbourne in late 1868 carrying a terrible secret. He has never read a word of his father's work. He is sent out to become a gentleman stockman on a 2000 square mile station in remotest, semi-arid parts of NSW. Here he inevitably gets enmeshed with Paakantji, colonists, colonial-born, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women.

Plorn, unexpectedly, encounters the same veneration of his father and familiarity with his work in Australia that was rampant in England. Against this backdrop, and featuring cricket tournaments, horse-racing, bushrangers, sheep droving, shifty stock and station agents, frontier wars and first encounters with Australian women, Plorn, meets extraordinary people and enjoys wonderful adventures as he works to prove himself.

This is Tom Keneally in his most familiar terrain. Taking historical figures and events and reimagining them with verve, compassion and humour. It is a triumph.
Tom Keneally won the Booker Prize in 1982 with Schindler's Ark, later made into the Steven Spielberg Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. His non-fiction includes the memoir Searching for Schindler and Three Famines, an LA Times Book of the Year, and the histories The Commonwealth of Thieves, The Great Shame and American Scoundrel. His fiction includes Shame and the Captives, The Daughters of Mars, The Widow and Her Hero (shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award), An Angel in Australia and Bettany's Book. His novels The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, and Confederates were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while Bring Larks and Heroes and Three Cheers for the Paraclete won the Miles Franklin Award. The People's Train was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Award and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, South East Asia division.