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Bridges, Royal Tasman (Roy) (1885 - 1952)

Gallery

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    Green Butterflies
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    The Fenceless Ranges
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    On His Majesty's Service : a tale of Van Diemen's Land
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Born
23 March 1885
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Died
14 March 1952
Sorell, Tasmania, Australia

Summary

Bridges was born and educated at Hobart, where he also took up a cadetship with the Tasmanian News in 1904. After a brief time working in Sydney for the Australian Star, he moved to the Melbourne Age, where he stayed until 1919. In 1911 he was a founding member of the Journalists' Association. His first novel, The Barb of an Arrow, was serialised in the Australian Star and published by the NSW Bookstall the same year. He went on to write 36 novels in forty years, many of them with themes of romance, convictism and bushranging as well as historical tales of colonial settlement. In 1930 Bridges returned to Tasmania to live with his sister, writer Hilda Bridges, at a family property outside of Hobart, where he remained most of his life.

Published resources

Books

  • Bridges, Roy, On His Majesty's Service : a tale of Van Diemen's Land, N.S.W. Bookstall Co., Sydney, 1914, 144 pp. Details
  • Bridges, Roy, The fugitive, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1916, 283 pp. Details
  • Bridges, Roy, Green Butterflies, Hutchinson, London, 1920s, 286 pp. Details
  • Bridges, Roy, The Fenceless Ranges, N.S.W. Bookstall Co., Sydney, 1921, 181 pp. Details
  • Bridges, Roy, Trinity, Hutchinson, London, 1931, 288 pp. Details

See also

Archival resources

University of Tasmania Library, Special/Rare Collection

  • Papers - Royal Tasman Bridges, 1900 - 1951, B4/A; University of Tasmania Library, Special/Rare Collection. Details

Rachael Weaver