For the Term of His Natural Life

For the Term of His Natural Life is the masterpiece of Marcus Clarke, an Australian writer of the colonial period. It was first serialized as His Natural Life in the Australian Journal from 1870 to 1872 and published in a revised single volume in 1874. Set against the 19th-century British system of transporting convicts to Australia, the novel tells the tragic life of the young Rufus Dawes: sentenced to transportation for life for a murder he did not commit, he is sent to Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania). On the transport ship and in the penal settlement, he faces flogging, solitary confinement, hard labor, and the tyranny of prison officers, and is also persistently persecuted by Maurice Frere, the man who actually committed the crime. Through long years of hard labor, Dawes escapes several times, saves others, and is repeatedly wronged, yet never gives up his hold on innocence and dignity; his bond with the young Sylvia Vickers becomes the only light in those dark years. Before writing, Clarke consulted a large body of documents on the convict system and traveled in person to inspect former penal sites such as Port Arthur in Tasmania, so his descriptions of the convict ship, Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur, and other settings have a strong documentary feel. The novel is both a Victorian melodrama with a twisting plot and an indictment of the convict system, and is regarded as one of the most important classics in Australian literary history.