Anna Johnston is Professor in English Literature at University of Queensland whose research explores the history and aftermath of the British Empire, especially in Australia. She is the author of Missionary Writing and Empire, 1800–1860 (2003).

• Introduction: settler colonialism and its forms of knowledge; Part I. Imagining Settler Humanitarianism: 1. Morality, violence and sentiment: precarious lives on colonial frontiers, 1788–1797; 2. Language, poetry and song: reading indigenous wordlists and grammars, 1770–1874; Part II. Regulating Settler Society: 3. 'Virtuous curiosity': penal practices and social theories, 1791–1843; 4. Prison letters: reading and writing from Norfolk Island, 1834–1860; Part III. Inventing Settler Science: 5. Collecting practices: Botany, print culture and empire, 1768–1988; 6. Creating colonial readers and imperial networks: the Tasmanian journal of natural science, 1841–1849; Conclusion: knowing the colony, knowing the world.

'In this highly readable yet nuanced analysis, Anna Johnston, one of the most original thinkers on Australian colonial culture, shows how texts on, from and about an Australia being colonised, reconfigured both knowledge and social reform endeavours across the Anglophone world.' Alan Lester, University of Sussex and Professor of History, La Trobe University