(Joan is the drudge of the Pilchard Tavern situated in Pol...)
Joan is the drudge of the Pilchard Tavern situated in Polperro which is a village and fishing harbor on the south-east Cornwall coast in the south west of England. She has a secret crush on Daniel Reynell, the owner/skipper of a fishing boat (the Reaper), but he is engaged to be married to another. During a fierce storm portion of the town is flooded and a navy press-gang takes advantage of the confusion to kidnap Daniel Reynell and a couple of others to join Captain William Bligh on the Bounty on a trip to the South Seas. Meanwhile, Joan had witnessed the abduction and while attempting to get help for Reynell 'borrows' a farmer's horse, but was caught, tried for horse stealing and sentenced to death, but this was commuted to transportation to NSW.
Mary Gaunt was an Australian novelist. She traveled in the West Indies, in West Africa, and in China and other parts of the East and wrote about her adventures and findings.
Background
Mary was born on February 20, 1861, in Indigo, Victoria, Australia. She was the eldest daughter of William Henry Gaunt and Elizabeth Palmer. Her father, an English-born civil servant, supported the family by working as a magistrate in the Australian gold fields. One of his chief responsibilities was to protect Chinese workers from racial violence. As a result of her father’s work, Gaunt was keenly aware of racial divisions from an early age. This knowledge would become the central focus of several novels later in Gaunt’s life.
Education
Mary attended Grenville College, Ballarat, Australia, and the University of Melbourne.
Gaunt was successful enough as a journalist to support her love of travel. In 1890, she ventured to England and India, returning to Australia in 1891 to write her first novel.
Gaunt’s first novel, Dave’s Sweetheart, was published in 1894. Surprisingly, it did not contain any insights into her foreign adventures. Rather, it was a romance set against the backdrop of the Australian gold fields. This first work introduced two of the major themes that would reappear throughout Gaunt’s fiction. Rigney stated, “Dave’s Sweetheart... initiates her use of the theme of two men of opposed moral qualities fighting for the love of a strong-willed woman. Another theme - the ways in which isolation in pioneer settlements brings out strengths and weaknesses in various individuals - recurs throughout her fiction and provides a regular point of interest in her travel writing.”
Gaunt married in 1894. Her husband, Hubert Lindsay Miller, encouraged Gaunt’s literary pursuits and even suggested that she retain her own last name when publishing. Gaunt continued writing romance novels set against the backdrop of Australia through the end of the 1800s. However, the emerging twentieth century - brought about numerous changes in Gaunt's life. In 1900, her husband passed away, leaving Gaunt with little financial security. Faced with the prospect of returning to her family for financial support, Gaunt instead opted to strike out on her own. Fueled by the desire to achieve financial independence, she changed literary directions, focusing on the genre of travel writing. The transition made sense - Gaunt loved the adventure of travel as well as the art of writing. Combining the two made perfect sense. It also proved financially rewarding.
Relocating to England, Gaunt set out to make a name for herself. Her first efforts were collaborations with English author John Ridgewell Essex. The Arm of the Leopard, published in 1904, and Fools Rush In, published in 1906, were both novels set in West Africa. The two novels earned Gaunt enough money so that she could make her first excursion to West Africa. Returning in 1908, Gaunt utilized her now firsthand knowledge of Africa, in addition to her childhood observations of racial inequalities, to write two more novels. Rigney stated, “On her return from the trip in 1908 she and Essex wrote The Silent Ones (1909), the tale of an Ashanti, James Craven, who, having studied at Cambridge and in Germany, no longer fits in when he returns home to Africa. Gaunt returned to the character of the educated black the following year in The Uncounted Cost.”
After her next novel, 1910’s The Mummy Moves, Gaunt shifted gears again, finally focusing on her travel writing endeavors alone. Her first effort, Alone in West Africa, appeared in 1912. Written both as an account of her own travels, as well as a study of the westernization of West Africa, Gaunt contrasted German and British influences.
In 1910 Gaunt set out for China. Her experiences in the Orient resulted in the travel book A Woman in China (1914). In her account, Gaunt discusses her concerns about the treatment of Chinese women, as well as her safety concerns about being a white woman traveling alone. However, the book was not wholly critical.
In the 1920s, Gaunt again shifted gears, this time relocating to Italy. She would spend the next ten years there, turning her travel experiences into works of fiction. Gaunt was dealt a devastating blow in 1940 when she was forced to flee Fascist Italy without any of her possessions. Without the mementos of her travels, Gaunt seemingly lost interest in her writing, as well as her life.