The Secret River

One of 20 drafts of Kate Grenville’s novel

The Secret River

Grenville’s novel arose from her research into her forebear, Solomon Wiseman, who settled on the Hawkesbury River at today’s Wiseman’s Ferry. The author wanted to understand what had happened when Wiseman arrived and ‘started the business of “settling”’ with its inevitable confrontations with the Aboriginal people.

This is the first draft. The novel took five years and twenty drafts to complete. The book had an immediate success on publication in 2005, winning a number of awards. But it sparked hostility from some historians who claimed that Grenville regarded her work as history. This was despite the clear statements in the book: ‘All the people within these pages … are works of fiction’ and that she had adapted source documents ‘for my imaginative purposes’.

Grenville received many appreciations from Aboriginal people and has said: ‘They recognise that the book is my act of acknowledgement, my way of saying: this is how I’m sorry.’
Display item The Secret River

 

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