An Account of the Voyage to New South Wales by George Barrington, Superintendent of the Convicts to which is prefixed a detail of his life, trials, speeches

George Barrington was an Irish-born convict whose reputation as the “Prince of Pickpockets” made his name commercially valuable to London publishers. Transported to New South Wales in 1791, he later became Superintendent of Convicts and High Constable, although the books issued under his name are generally regarded as spurious or heavily compiled.

This volume presents a semi-fictionalised account of Barrington’s life, trials, transportation, and supposed voyage to New South Wales. Although framed as a first-person memoir, much of the text is drawn from other contemporary sources and reshaped for a British readership interested in crime, punishment, and the new penal colony.

The engraved title page includes a vignette of an Aboriginal man fishing from a canoe, setting the visual tone for the book’s picturesque treatment of New South Wales. The volume contains a folding hand-coloured map and ten hand-coloured plates, including views of Sydney, Indigenous subjects, and scenes connected with the outward voyage.

The book contains a folding, hand-coloured map of New South Wales and ten hand-coloured plates. These include four views of Sidney (Sydney), as well as illustrations titled A Native Family, The Cape of Good Hope, The Peak of Teneriffe, Pinchgut Islands, Spotted Hyena, and Camelopard (Giraffe). The text also offers embellished accounts of encounters with convicts and Indigenous people, reflections on colonial administration, and idealised representations of the natural world.