Emigration

This exhibition book from the National Gallery of Victoria is enthralling. It presents the imagery of British emigration, hitherto unstudied; fifteen million people fled during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837–1901). There is a mix of art history with social history: major and minor paintings and popular-culture prints; memorabilia and relics. A wedding ring salvaged from the dreadful 1857 wreck of the emigrant ship Dunbar reminds us that there was only one survivor when, at the end of the voyage, she crashed into Sydney Heads.