author
John Miller
1861–1917
Best known for The Workingman’s Paradise, this English-born writer and journalist used fiction to explore labor politics, social inequality, and big political dreams in colonial Australia.
1 Audiobook
The Workingman's Paradise: An Australian Labour Novel
by John Miller
About the author
Born in Bristol in 1861, he became a journalist, author, and outspoken advocate in the Australian labor movement. He is widely identified as the writer William Lane, who published The Workingman’s Paradise under the pen name John Miller.
His work is closely tied to the social and political struggles of the late 1800s. Alongside journalism and fiction, he became known for his strong utopian socialist ideas and for his involvement in plans to build a communal settlement in Paraguay.
He died in 1917. Today, the name John Miller is most often remembered in connection with The Workingman’s Paradise, a novel that captures the pressures, hopes, and arguments surrounding working-class life in Australia at the end of the nineteenth century.