The Fatal Shore

Awards

• 1987 Duff Cooper Prize.
• 1988 WH Smith Literary Award.

Publication history

The Fatal Shore was originally published in 1986 by Alfred A. Knopf in the United States and by William Collins in the UK, and subsequently published in paperback in the UK by Collins Harvill in 1987. The Folio Society published a slipcased premium edition in 1998, extending to a fourth printing in 2006.

Reception

Australian novelist Thomas Keneally, in a review for The New York Times, described the book as "an authoritative and engrossing record," stating that "although the story of the convict system has recently been covered by a number of Australian historians, this account, richly peopled with bizarre and compelling characters, is probably the most full-blooded and monumental treatment the subject has been given."

Brian Smith, writing in the World Socialist Web Site, gave a positive review of the book, declaring that it "provide[s] a vivid portrayal of the human cost of Britain's colonial venture and how these experiences have helped shape modern Australia."

Historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote in A Shorter History of Australia that "Robert Hughes's wonderfully written history of the convicts, The Fatal Shore, was to entice more readers than any other book on Australia's history, but he loaded the dice when he likened the convict system to the Gulag Archipelago in the Soviet Union."

In a 2013 Quadrant article, historian Keith Windschuttle argued that The Fatal Shore "remains the most widely read representation of the old anti-British historical paradigm created from the 1940s to the 1970s by Marxists and other leftists in university history departments." Windschuttle wrote that "Hughes’s gift for the dramatic phrase led him to go further than his sources and argue that nineteenth-century New South Wales was actually a precursor to Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago."

In popular culture

• The book is featured in the Netflix TV series The Punisher in the episode "My Brother's Keeper." One of the main characters, Amy (Giorgia Whigham), is seen reading it.
• American comedian Doug Stanhope has mentioned the book numerous times during interviews, most notably during The Joe Rogan Experience podcast #1144 (at around the 56-minute mark), where he comments on the number of pages and remarks on the level of brutality ever-present in Australia's convict past.

References

References

1. "Past Winners of Duff Cooper Prize". Duff Cooper Prize charity.
2. (2002). "WHSmith Literary Awards". Book Awards by J M McElligott.
3. Keneally, Thomas. (25 January 1987). "Rogues' Continent: The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes". New York Times Books.
4. "Book awards: WH Smith Literary Award".
5. Hughes, Robert. (2003). "The Fatal Shore: A History of the Transportation of Convicts to Australia, 1787-1868". Vintage.
6. Smith, Brian. (21 June 1999). "A superb history of Australia's founding A review of The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes". [[World Socialist Web Site]].
7. Blainey, Geoffrey. (2014). "A Shorter History of Australia". Vintage.
8. Windschuttle, Keith. (1 April 2013). "Australia's 'Historical Trajectory'". [[Quadrant (magazine).