Above the Starry Frame by Helen Townsend

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. A few tiny marks on foredges. Interior and binding are still excellent.

Full title: Above the Starry Frame: A True Story of Migration and Enduring Love From the Irish Potato Famine to the Australian Goldfields in the Time of the Eureka Stockade

In 1850, William Irwin arrived in Australia, alone and just eighteen years old. A refugee from the Irish Potato Famine, he left behind a world of hunger and poverty for the frontiers of a new world.

Young and adventurous, and with the will to make something of his life, William set himself up in the heart of gold rush Ballarat, one of the wealthiest 19th-century cities in the world. There he was swept up in the Eureka Stockade.

Irwin never returned home, though his family continued to write to him. His great-granddaughter, Helen Townsend, recovered 54 of these letters, which span 40 years, and it is from them that she draws powerful inspiration for this book. Above the Starry Frame re-imagines the life of William Irwin through the prism of those letters and extensive archival research.

It is also a biography of one of the first genuinely modern cities, and a moving examination of the impact of migration on those who leave and those who stay behind. (back cover)