The Many Worlds of R H Mathews: In Search of an Australian Anthropologist by Martin Thomas

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Dust jacket has some light creasing at edges and spine. Interior and binding are also very good. Tiny mark on top foredge.

The Many Worlds of R.H. Mathews is about the life and work of the renowned 19th-century surveyor turned ethnologist, R.H. Mathews, whose studies of Aboriginal Australia were path-breaking and quite controversial.

His childhood in Goulburn meant that he grew up with Aboriginal children as playmates, so when he began his obsession with documenting Aboriginal life, he came to his subject with fond familiarity, not the freakshow interest that spurred many of the English anthropologists of the time, especially Baldwin Spencer, who went out of his way to discredit Mathews' work, especially after his death.

Due to this conspiracy, Mathews has been a reasonably unknown figure in early anthropology. Still, his legacy and work have been reassessed, and he is emerging as one of our most important documentors of Aboriginal language, legends and mythology. Martin's approach to his subject is not a conventional biography but something more ambitious and unusual, and one perfectly tuned to the revelations it contains. (book flap)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers, please note that this book may contain descriptions and/or images of people who have passed away.