Re Review: Recounts stand but don't deliver
Since the Age newspaper has given neither myself nor Allen & Unwin the courtesy of a reply to our complaint about the review published on 24 September 2011, I will publish my open letter to the reviewer, Warwick McFadyen, below:
Open letter to Warwick McFadyen:
I read with surprise your review of my book Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady: the true story of bushrangers Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg in “Recounts stand but don’t deliver” (Age, 24 September). In your three sentence summary of Thunderbolt and Mary Ann’s lives you wrote:
"Baxter, on the other hand, zeroes in on one bushranger, Frederick Ward aka Captain Thunderbolt and his partner, part-Aborigine
Mary Ann Bugg, with whom he had several children. Thunderbolt, having ranged over parts of the Hunter Valley and west and
north of the region, died in his mid-30s in 1870. Bugg, 28, had died three years earlier."
She had? Not according to my book – the one you were supposedly reviewing. She actually died in 1905, aged 70. In fact, she couldn’t have died in 1867 because a woman cannot give birth to a baby nine months after she dies!
Interestingly, Toby Creswell’s Notorious Australians: the Mad, the Bad and the Dangerous (ABC, 2008) also reported erroneously that “Mary Ann died … in 1867 at the age of twenty-eight”. Perhaps you picked up Creswell’s book by mistake and read Mary Ann’s one page non-source-referenced error-ridden biography instead of my 350-page exhaustively researched book with bibliography and 200 page back-up website. In truth, Mary Ann would have been aged 33 if she had indeed died in 1867 as the first chapter of my book makes clear (information accessible also via the book’s index), but that’s a minor error compared to all the others.
Like you, Creswell also wrote that during his bushranging years Thunderbolt “worked through the Hunter Valley”. In fact, Thunderbolt spent only a few weeks of his nearly seven years of bushranging in the Hunter Valley and surrounds. Most was spent in the northern quarter of New South Wales, with some years spent in the districts near Bourke – as my book recounts in detail.
When writing a book review, a reviewer essentially makes an unwritten contract with readers – and with the author, for that matter – assuring them that they have read the book they are reviewing. If they are being paid to write the review, they are also making a financial contract with the publisher.
Clearly, the dishonour roll of those who fail to abide by these commitments has just increased in size.
Carol Baxter, 26 September 2011
I read with surprise your review of my book Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady: the true story of bushrangers Thunderbolt and Mary Ann Bugg in “Recounts stand but don’t deliver” (Age, 24 September). In your three sentence summary of Thunderbolt and Mary Ann’s lives you wrote:
"Baxter, on the other hand, zeroes in on one bushranger, Frederick Ward aka Captain Thunderbolt and his partner, part-Aborigine
Mary Ann Bugg, with whom he had several children. Thunderbolt, having ranged over parts of the Hunter Valley and west and
north of the region, died in his mid-30s in 1870. Bugg, 28, had died three years earlier."
She had? Not according to my book – the one you were supposedly reviewing. She actually died in 1905, aged 70. In fact, she couldn’t have died in 1867 because a woman cannot give birth to a baby nine months after she dies!
Interestingly, Toby Creswell’s Notorious Australians: the Mad, the Bad and the Dangerous (ABC, 2008) also reported erroneously that “Mary Ann died … in 1867 at the age of twenty-eight”. Perhaps you picked up Creswell’s book by mistake and read Mary Ann’s one page non-source-referenced error-ridden biography instead of my 350-page exhaustively researched book with bibliography and 200 page back-up website. In truth, Mary Ann would have been aged 33 if she had indeed died in 1867 as the first chapter of my book makes clear (information accessible also via the book’s index), but that’s a minor error compared to all the others.
Like you, Creswell also wrote that during his bushranging years Thunderbolt “worked through the Hunter Valley”. In fact, Thunderbolt spent only a few weeks of his nearly seven years of bushranging in the Hunter Valley and surrounds. Most was spent in the northern quarter of New South Wales, with some years spent in the districts near Bourke – as my book recounts in detail.
When writing a book review, a reviewer essentially makes an unwritten contract with readers – and with the author, for that matter – assuring them that they have read the book they are reviewing. If they are being paid to write the review, they are also making a financial contract with the publisher.
Clearly, the dishonour roll of those who fail to abide by these commitments has just increased in size.
Carol Baxter, 26 September 2011