Having arrived with his parents from Ireland in New South Wales in 1840 as a 'bounty emigrant', the young Roderick Flanagan (1828-62) quickly developed a passionate interest in his adopted country. Following an apprenticeship with a city printer, the educated and astute Flanagan worked for a number of Australia's early newspapers, including Melbourne's Daily News and the Sydney Morning Herald, where he acquired his distinctive, journalistic approach to history. Published shortly after his early death in London in 1862, Flanagan's two-volume chronicle of New South Wales represents a lifetime of research, and demonstrates the author's balanced and unpartisan approach to politics. Volume 1 covers early exploration and the first sixty-eight years of European immigration. Volume 2 addresses the campaign for the discontinuation of criminal transportation and the origins of the Elected Council, and concludes with substantial appendices. It also examines the political and social character of neighbouring New Zealand.