John Lang (writer)

John Lang (19 December 1816 – 20 August 1864) was an Australian lawyer and was Australia's first native born novelist.

[1] In 1842, at a public meeting, he seconded a motion proposed by William Wentworth, that the Crown be petitioned to grant the colony a representative assembly.

These began to be published in book form in 1853, The Wetherbys and Too Clever by Half both 1853, followed by Too Much Alike (1854), The Forger's Wife (1855, said to be the first English-language detective novel),[2] Captain Macdonald (1856), Will He Marry Her (1858), The Ex-Wife (1858), My Friend's Wife (1859), The Secret Police (1859),[3] and Botany Bay; or True Stories of the Early Days of Australia (1859).

Botany Bay has been reprinted several times, sometimes under the titles of Clever Criminals, or Remarkable Convicts.

Lang also published Geraldine, A Ballad in 1854, and in 1859 Wanderings in India and other Sketches reprinted from Household Words.