Old South

"Noted historian Matthew Wright paints a vibrant picture of mainland life from the 1840s, of the rise and fall of the first privately founded Pakeha settlements with their hopeful framework of social idealism, business enterprise and religious conviction. As history shows they were doomed before they began, overwhelmed by the developing southern frontier - a colourful, vigorous world of gold and wool, of social climbers, would be aristocrats and ambitious ne'er-do-wells" -- Back cover.