The Gardens of Hell: John Mitchel in Van Diemen's Land 1850 - 1853.

Sydney, Kenthurst: Kangaroo Press, 1988. Hardback small octavo, dustjacket, very good condition (in very good dustjacket), black & white photos, frontispiece map, few small scratches front cover, minor edgewear. 126 pp. The memoir of John Mitchel, an Irish nationalist who participated in the 1848 uprising, who was transported to Tasmania in 1850. This book mainly concerns his confinement for three years as a political prisoner in Van Diemen's Land. He escaped and made his way to New York. The editor, Peter O'Shaughnessy, states that he examined the text of John Mitchel's 'Jail Journal’, published in Mitchel's newspaper 'The Citizen' in New York in 1854 (from copies in the New York Public Library and the State Library of Tasmania, Hobart.) However, the main source for the text published here is the edition published by M. H. Gill & Son Ltd, Dublin, 1913. In this present edition, Chapters 1 and 2 are selected from the first 14 chapters, and Chapters 3 to 13 takes up Mitchel's time in Van Diemen's Land, starting rom the original Chapter 15. A good way to learn about a convict unknown to most Australians.