Novelist Richard Miller Flanagan is widely regarded as one of contemporary Australia’s finest writers. Born in Longford, Tasmania, in 1961, he was brought up in the small mining town of Rosebery in the west of the island, the fifth of six children in a family descended from Irish convicts transported in the 1840s to what was then known as Van Diemen’s Land. Flanagan left school at sixteen to work as a bush labourer before attending the University of Tasmania where he graduated with first class honours in 1983. He was then awarded a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University where he took a Master of Letters degree in History. Returning to Tasmania, Flanagan worked as a labourer and a river guide and produced four non-fiction works before publishing his first novel.
Death of a River Guide
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Citation: Staniforth, Martin. "Richard Flanagan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 February 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12730, accessed 08 September 2024.]
