Description
Book SynopsisPart Regency mystery, part imperial history, this title presents a tale of adventure and deceit across two worlds - British aristocrats and Australian felons - bound together in an emerging age of opportunity and individualism, where personal worth was battling power based on birth alone. It illuminates the darker side of this age of liberty.
Trade ReviewA compelling narrative, full of twists and turns, enticing locales, fascinating characters, and strange paradoxes. It spans two hemispheres, traverses the high-life of the aristocracy on the one hand, and the brutal low-life of Antipodean convicts on the other. -- Iain McCalman, author of
Darwin's ArmadaMcKenzie is a rising star in the historical profession, and this important and original book makes impressively plain why this is so. It is that rare accomplishment: a major work of scholarship that also deserves to reach a broader public. -- David Cannadine, author of
Mellon: An American LifeAspects of the 19th century, as depicted in this work, could almost be read as a gothic mystery—with a clandestine marriage, anonymous letters, a European countess, and threats of disinheritance not to mention the swindling trickster, whose exploits bear witness to audacity in the face of adversity. However those gothic qualities should not overshadow the more serious aspects of the early 19th-century political power struggle between the abolitionist William Wilberforce and the slave trader Henry Lascelles… While McKenzie's text is based on solid research, it is engaging and offers a new interpretation of the corresponding attitudes, fears, and suspicions in both the metropole and the periphery. -- Tina Picton Phillipps * BBC History *
A Swindler's Progress is a highly gripping narrative, its sociological insights conveyed largely through a series of striking human dramas. -- Matthew Reisz * Times Higher Education *
