[Cranford interest?]; The Commandant

London: Macmillan, 1975. FIRST UK EDITION. 8vo. Original black buckram, spine lettered in white. Illustrated endpapers, the "design taken from a sketch of Moreton Bay held at the Mitchell Library, Sydney" (author's note). Bruising to head of spine. Toned, erratum slip (originally inserted at author's note), pasted directly, by PO, to p. 232, over incorrect lines. Else, clean and tight. In the original illustrated dust jacket: edgewear and creasing. A solid copy of Anderson's own favourite novel (not the Regency Romance it appears). Very good/ very good Jessica Anderson (1926-2010) was a prize-winning Australian novelist, whose third, true crime, novel recounts the murder of Captain Patrick Logan, the notoriously brutal Commandant of the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, 1826-30. The novelist's version uses Logan's young (fictionalised) sister-in-law to offer her own commentary on events. Anderson once drew parallels between the Moreton Bay social climate and Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford!