This ‘documentary’ of the lives and careers of Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall presents a detailed account, based on extensive research into difficult-to-access material in obscure publications, of the three writers’ work in prose and poetry. This is set in the contexts of the ramifying vicissitudes (of health, and familial, financial and professional difficulties) of their personal histories, within the Bohemian milieu of Melbourne and the larger domain of later 19th-century Australian history and culture.