Abstract

Bruce Moore. Oxford University Press, 2000. 190 pages. ISBN 0 19 550838 6

This book examines the language of the the nineteenth-century Australian goldfields. It takes the form of a dictionary, with supporting quotations from contemporary texts. More than 500 headwords cover many aspects of the goldfields, including methods of mining, law and order, social life, hardships and afflictions, thieves and villains. The extensive quotations from contemporary texts have been chosen for the historical information they provide, for their readability, and for the ways in which they evoke the living pulse of the golden era--the book is a goldfields' 'reader' as much as a dictionary.