The Unhappy Transport's Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years..

1821. James Revel, The Unhappy Sufferer" [Broadside]. [Transportation]. Revel, James. The Unhappy Transport's Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years Transportation, At Botany Bay, New South Wales, Who was Transported in February, 1806, And Returned to Town June 1, 1821, Being a Remarkable and Succinct History of the Life of James Revel, The Unhappy Sufferer. Nottingham: Ordoyno, Printer, [1821]. 14-3/4" x 9-3/4" broadside mounted to backing sheet, text in triple columns below headline, woodcut portrait at head of second column. Moderate toning and soiling, light foxing in a few places, light creasing and edgewear. Rare. $4,500. * The fable of James Revel's fourteen-year sentence began as an eighteenth-century chapbook ballad documenting Revel's transportation to Virginia in the American colonies. (The earliest copies were printed in London, probably in the 1750s or 1760s.) As society and the logistics of transportation changed, the language of the ballad changed to suit the circumstances, with the dates of Revel's departure and return altered appropriately to lend authenticity. The ballad's text mixes conventional signifiers of the American and Australian colonies. References to a "seven months" journey to Port Jackson and other details correspond to Australia, but references to plantations, tobacco plants and "the poor negro slaves" come from the American version of the ballad. Transportation broadsides like these provide interesting cultural insight into public perceptions of the penal system and its relationship to the expanding British Empire. The printer of this broadside, "Ordoyno" of Nottingham, is Charles Sambrook Ordoyno (1766-1826) who was a successful publisher and printer in Nottingham, specializing in salacious pamphlets describing trials, murders and hangings. This imprint is rare and appears to be unrecorded. No copies located on OCLC or LibraryHub. We located other Revel broadsides set in Botany Bay with varying imprints and dates from 1821-1824 at 5 institutions worldwide (Mitchell Library, National Library of Scotland, British Library, Oxford University, National Library of Australia).