Rolf Boldrewood (1826-1915)

Brief Biography

"Rolf Boldrewood" was the pseudonym of Thomas Alexander Browne (1826-1915), who was born on 6 August 1826 in London, the eldest child of Sylvester John Brown, a shipmaster who had served with the East India Co., and his wife Elizabeth Angell, née Alexander - he added the "e" to his surname in the 1860s. Browne arrived in Australia at the age of five, after sailing to Sydney with his father who, as captain of the barque Proteus, had delivered a cargo of convicts to Tasmania.

Browne was educated in Sydney until 1841 when he moved to Melbourne to join his father who had firstly taken up a run at Mount Macedon, and then started the first ferry runs between Melbourne and Williamstown across Port Philip Bay. After finishing his education in Melbourne, Browne earnt his living as a pastoralist, firstly near Portland, and then Swan Hill in Victoria, and subsequently near Narrandera in New South Wales. A succession of severe droughts finished his career as a squatter in 1869, and he went to live in Sydney. Appointments as a police magistrate in 1871 and as a gold commissioner in 1872 in New South Wales followed, and he continued in this line until he retired to Melbourne in 1895. He died on 11 March 1915 and was buried in Brighton cemetery.

As a writer he was quite prolific, starting with My Run Home in 1874, he subsequently wrote a total of 16 novels, finishing with The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West in 1905. In addition he wrote a volume of autobiography (Old Melbourne Memories 1884), the non-fiction works Shearing in the Riverina in 1870 and An Australian Grazier's Guide in 1879, and a collection titled In Bad Company and Other Stories in 1901.

Browne's pseudonym, "Rolf Boldrewood" is derived from a line in the narrative poem Marmion by Sir Walter Scott whom Browne admired.

Bibliography

Novels
My Run Home 1874
The Squatter's Dream: A Story of Australian Life 1875
A Colonial Reformer 1876
Babes in the Bush 1877
Robbery Under Arms: A Story of Life and Adventure in the Bush and in the Goldfields of Australia 1882
The Sealskin Cloak 1884-85
The Crooked Stick, or, Pollie's Probation 1885
The Sphinx of Eaglehawk: A Tale of Old Bendigo 1887
A Sydney-Side Saxon 1888
Nevermore 1889-90
The Miner's Right: A Tale of the Australian Goldfields 1890
A Modern Buccaneer 1894
Plan Living: A Bush Idyll 1898
'War to the Knife' or Tangata Maori 1899
The Ghost Camp, or The Avengers 1902
The Last Chance: A Tale of the Golden West 1905

Short Stories
Our New Cook: A Tale of the Times 1898
A Romance of Canvas Town and Other Stories 1881
In Bad Company and Other Stories 1901

Non-Fiction
Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales 1870
Australian Grazier's Guide 1879
Australian Grazier's Guide: No II - Cattle 1881

Autobiography
Old Melbourne Memories 1884

This page and its contents are copyright © 2008 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: January 5, 2008.