Robbery Under Arms

Rolf Boldrewood

First published in 1888
Second Edition (1 Vol. Crown 8vo.), June, 1889
Reprinted August and December, 1889: February, June, September and November, 1890: February, May,
and September, 1891, 1892: January and November, 1893, 1895 (twice) 1897, 1898, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1904,
1906, 1909, 1910, 1912, 1913, 1915, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1922, 1926, 1930, 1937, 1947, 1949, 1951,
1955, 1957. Published by Seal Books 1970. This edition published by New Holland in 2008

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A record of this book is held at the National Library of Australia

E-ISBN 9781921655333

Publisher: Fiona Schultz
Managing Editor: Lliane Clarke
Designer: Hayley Norman
Cover Photograph: ‘Stagecoach Hold-up, Eugowra Rocks’, 1894, Patrick Marony.
Courtesy National Library of Australia.
Production Manager: Linda Bottari
Printer: McPherson's Printing Group, Maryborough, Victoria

FOREWORD

ROLF BOLDREWOOD was the pen-name of THOMAS ALEXANDER BROWNE (1826–1915), the son of Sylvester John Browne, employee of the East India Company. He was born in London on 6th August, 1826, and accompanied his parents to Australia as a child of four. He received his education at Sydney College, under W.T. Cape. At the age of seventeen he took up station life in Western Victoria, and from 1844 to 1856 was the owner of Squattlesea Mere station in the Port Fairy district. He later purchased other station properties, but suffered such heavy losses during the droughts of 1866 and 1869 that he abandoned squatting altogether.

A few years later he became a Police Magistrate and Goldfields-Warden at Gulgong (N.S.W.), and was afterwards transferred to Albury. From 1870, he contributed to Sydney and Melbourne periodicals under the nom de plume of “Rolf Boldrewood.” An ardent admirer of Scott, he tells us that he “fell across these lines in the introduction to the first canto of Marmion:

And that Red King, who, while of old

Through Boldrewood the chase he led

By his loved huntsman's arrow bled.

The name took my fancy. So much so that, prefacing it with a Norse or Saxon one, I adopted it permanently.”

His book, The Squatter's Dream, was published in London (1878), under the title Ups and Downs. Then followed Old Melbourne Memories (1884).

“My friend George Henry Cox said to me one day, ‘You would write a good bushranging story.' So I said I would try.” Robbery Under Arms was the result. It first appeared as a serial in the Sydney Mail during 1881, but was published in book form in 1888. According to Browne's own statement, the main facts of the story are true, though often changed as to time and place.