author
James Hardy Vaux
b. 1782
A repeat offender, gifted self-mythologizer, and sharp observer of criminal slang, this early nineteenth-century writer turned a turbulent life into one of Australia’s earliest literary landmarks.
1 Audiobook
Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux. Written by himself.
by James Hardy Vaux
About the author
Born in Surrey in 1782, James Hardy Vaux was an English-born convict and memoirist whose life moved between London crime, repeated transportation, and colonial Australia. Reliable biographical sources describe him as having been transported to Australia three times, and his story has remained notable partly because he wrote about that world from the inside.
Vaux is best known for Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux, first published in 1819. The book is widely remembered for including A Vocabulary of the Flash Language, a glossary of underworld slang that has been described as the first dictionary written in Australia, while the memoir itself is often regarded as Australia’s first full-length autobiography.
What makes Vaux memorable is the mix of confession, survival, and performance in his writing. He was not simply recording events; he was shaping a vivid voice out of a life marked by theft, punishment, reinvention, and uneasy respectability.