Book description
This gripping nineteenth-century adventure stars Jorgen Jorgenson,
who ran away to sea at fourteen and began a brilliant career by
sailing to establish the first colony in Tasmania. Twists of fortune
then found him captaining a warship for Napoleon before joining a
British trading voyage to Iceland, where he staged an outrageous coup
and ruled the country for two months.
Much lay ahead, from imprisonment in the hulks to patronage by
Joseph Banks and travels in Europe as a British spy. But Jorgenson was
dogged by his own excesses, and ended up transported as a convict to
the very colony he helped to found. Here he reinvented himself again
as an explorer, and, despite his sympathy for the people, was caught
up in the terrible Aboriginal clearances. Using unpublished sources
and letters, Sarah Bakewell tells his astonishing tale with dazzling verve.
Sarah Bakewell had a wandering childhood in Europe, Australia and
England. After studying at the University of Essex, she was a curator of
early printed books at the Wellcome Library before becoming a full-time
writer, publishing her highly acclaimed biographies
The Smart
and
How To Live
. She lives in London, where she teaches creative writing at City
University and catalogues rare book collections for the National Trust..
www. sarahbakewell. com
