author
John Martineau
1834–1910
A thoughtful English traveler and biographer, he turned close observation into lively books about Australia and about the Victorian world around him. His writing mixes curiosity, moral seriousness, and a strong sense of character.
1 Audiobook
Letters from Australia
by John Martineau
About the author
Born in 1834 and dying in 1910, John Martineau was an English writer best known for Letters from Australia (1869) and for The Life and Correspondence of Sir Bartle Frere. Records for his books and author listings also connect him with the well-known Martineau family.
Letters from Australia grew out of a stay of about fifteen months in the Australian colonies in 1867–1868. During that visit he wrote a series of pieces first published in The Spectator under the signature "Wild Ass," later gathered into book form. The result is a travel book shaped by firsthand experience and an alert eye for people and place.
He was remembered after his death in a family memoir, John Martineau: The Pupil of Kingsley (1921), written by his daughter Violet Isabel Martineau. That title suggests something important about how he was seen: as a man formed by ideas, faith, and friendship, and as a writer interested not only in events but in the lives behind them.