Author Henry Savery is credited with being Australia's first novelist, for his work 'Quintus Servinton', but author and historian Sean Doyle says in fact the first Autralian-born novelist was John Lang. Lang was born in a Parramatta pub in 1816 and his 1836 novel called 'Violet; Or, the Danseuse: A Portraiture of Human Passion and Character' was published anonymously in London. It was quite a feat for a twenty-year old. Lang went on to write twenty novels, a number of serials, a travelogue of India and to run a newspaper that would eventually hire a young Rudyard Kipling.  Now his extraordinary life has been chronicled in a new biography. 

Guest: Sean Doyle, author of ‘Australia’s trail-blazing first novelist  - John Lang”, published by Big Sky publishing.

This story originally aired on 15 August 2024.