Henry Savery

Henry Savery (4 August 1791 – 6 February 1842) was a convict transported to Port Arthur, Tasmania, and Australia's first novelist.

Savery ran a sugar-refining business which was declared bankrupt in 1819, and had proprietorship of the newspaper The Bristol Observer for a little over two years,[3] after which he returned to sugar refining.

Arriving in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land at the end of 1825, Savery was retained in government service and worked for the Colonial Treasurer, an appointment which caused controversy among other colonists.

[8] These were published in the Colonial Times and, after settling a libel suit, collected in the book The Hermit of Van Diemen's Land (1829).

He was given permission to reside at Major Macintosh's Lawn Farm on the banks of the Derwent River, about six kilometers down stream from New Norfolk, on the condition that he not carry on his own business.

Quintus Servinton: A Tale founded upon Incidents of Real Occurrence was published anonymously in 1831 to reasonably good reviews from the colonial press.

[13] Brought before the magistrate who had chaperoned his wife, he was again sentenced to transportation to Port Arthur where, early in 1842, he died possibly after slitting his own throat.