The goldfields made fortunes for a few and kept no record of the rest. I went looking for the rest.
Four novels built from parish records, assay ledgers and the letters families kept in biscuit tins. Written for the people the official history left out.
The Assayer’s Wife
A wife left to keep the ledger when the goldfield took her husband’s name
The history books remember the diggers and the men who weighed their gold. The Assayer’s Wife follows the woman who kept the ledger, the housekeeper who fed the diggings’ overflow, and the daughter born in a tent on the goldfield — the people whose names survive only in the margins of someone else’s record.
Built from parish registers, assay-office ledgers and the letters families still keep in biscuit tins.
A talk that sends the room back to the record, looking for who else got left out.
An hour in the classroom or the reading room, primary sources passed hand to hand, and a research trail your students or members can follow themselves afterwards. Delivered to libraries, schools and history societies.
1850sVictorian goldfields4NovelsWritersResearch-methods session
Priya Raman
Read chapter one, plus a letter about the research most Sundays.
One page on the research behind the story. No courses, no funnel, unsubscribe in a click.