Edward Snell was an engineer, surveyor, artist and adventurer, but above all he was a diarist. The part of his life that was least public is the reason he will be remembered. He kept two diaries - one in England from 1842 to 1849 and one in Australia from 1849 to 1859. They are both literary and artistic delights, the repositories of Snell's humour, reflections and talks of his life in two hemispheres.
His Australian diary, long regarded as one of the treasures of the State Library of Victoria's Australian Manuscripts Collection, is here published for the first time, every word and sketch intact. It records Snell's voyages to and from the colonies and tells of his experiences in South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria - where, after spending some months on the goldfields near Bendigo, he won the contract to build the somewhat ill-fated Geelong-Melbourne railway, Australia's first country railway.
Edward Snell was a skilled and versatile artist, and a man blessed with an independent spirit and a perceptive eye for human foibles. His journal caught the overflow of his creative energies and still sparkles with his personality. With its profuse illustrations, ranging from detailed studies of insects and animals (some delicately coloured) to quickly sketched, humorous impressions of everyday life, it presents a lively and irreverent picture of the society and the land he discovered, and reveals to us a man who loved life - and often loved to make fun of it.
Local notes
His Australian diary, long regarded as one of the treasures of the State Library of Victoria's Australian Manuscripts Collection, is here published for the first time, every word and sketch intact. It records Snell's voyages to and from the colonies and tells of his experiences in South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria - where, after spending some months on the goldfields near Bendigo, he won the contract to build the somewhat ill-fated Geelong-Melbourne railway, Australia's first country railway.
Edward Snell was a skilled and versatile artist, and a man blessed with an independent spirit and a perceptive eye for human foibles. His journal caught the overflow of his creative energies and still sparkles with his personality. With its profuse illustrations, ranging from detailed studies of insects and animals (some delicately coloured) to quickly sketched, humorous impressions of everyday life, it presents a lively and irreverent picture of the society and the land he discovered, and reveals to us a man who loved life - and often loved to make fun of it.