3.5★s
Elizabeth Macarthur’s Letters is a collection of sixty-five letters written by the wife of John Macarthur and edited by award-winning, best-selling Australian author, Kate Grenville, who cites these letters as her inspiration for her novel, A Room Made Of Leaves.

Grenville has taken a small selection of Elizabeth’s voluminous correspondence, these the sixty years from when she first travelled to New South Wales up to her death. They are letters to family and friends, but only one are written to her husband. Grenville has “pruned” them heavily and regularised the spelling, for which most readers will be very grateful.

Preceding the letters is an outline of Elizabeth Macarthur’s life, and particulars of her children and grandchildren. Each letter is prefaced by Grenville’s comments. Letters to Elizabeth’s mother often gloss over certain events and situations, or omit them altogether, as might be expected from a daughter wishing to save her very distant mother worry; letters to friends, and her account of the voyage to NSW are much more frank; Elizabeth tailors the tone and content of her letters to the recipient, but also bears in mind when a letter might be more widely read.

The attitudes, as evidenced in these letters, towards convicts, slaves and the indigenous population, while unenlightened and far from admirable, are in keeping with those of the times, although her attitude changes somewhat, as her situation does.

With regards her new home, Elizabeth touches on a myriad of subjects: botany, the lack of suitable female friends, the summer heat, excursions to the surrounds, the native population, their moves to Parramatta and later, Camden, business, politics, and gossip about acquaintances.

This is a book that will likely appeal to readers of the novel the letters inspired, and those with a fervent interest in eighteenth and nineteenth Century NSW history; others may find themselves tempted to skim. What is apparent from each of Grenville’s prefaces is the depth of her research.
This unbiased review is from an unsolicited copy provided by Text Publishing.