The Shadow of the Guns

In The SHADOW OF THE GUNS Joan Harvey recounts a unique life as an independent-minded girl growing up in the late 1800s.  Although born in Bangalore, India, her early childhood was spent in Hobart, Tasmania.  Left in the care of relatives in Hobart at a young age when her parents returned to India where her father was serving in the Indian Army, Joan penned these memories partly to record for her sister the events of everyday life in Tasmanian society and to put down what was known of her ancestors, members of the Butler and Cox families, early free settlers in Van Dieman’s Land. When she was 14 years old, Joan’s family travelled to Europe enabling Joan to finish her schooling in Switzerland and England and undertake a grand tour. A sweeping tale of colonial Tasmania, as well as of the English military campaigns in India and Burma, The SHADOW OF THE GUNS is a unique account of the period. In 1902 Joan returned to Tasmania, now part of the new nation Australia, ready to face whatever the 20th Century had to offer.