- Born
- 8 July 1817
Lingfield, Surrey, England - Died
- 6 February 1906
Southwick, West Sussex, England
Summary
Bonwick was born at Surrey, England, and grew up in London, training and working as a teacher before coming to Australia in 1841 and settling in Hobart. He went on to open a series of schools, often writing his own textbooks, as well as spending time in the Victorian goldfields, editing a number of journals, giving lecture tours for a radical land movement, and lobbying for liquor prohibition. He researched the early history of Australian settlement, producing several volumes of historical records. He wrote widely on colonial history, as well as publishing a biography of John Batman, two autobiographical works, short stories, children's fiction and two novels, The Tasmanian Lily (1873) and Mike Howe, the Bushranger of Van Diemen's Land (1873).