The classic Australian convict novel, first serialised in the 1870s and set largely at Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula. Clarke's narrative follows Rufus Dawes, an innocent man wrongly transported to the colonies, through the worst of the system — solitary confinement, brutal floggings, the chain gangs, escape attempts, and recapture. It is melodramatic and uneven but it is also the book that fixed the convict era in Australian public imagination, and it is still required reading for anyone who wants to understand what 19th-century Tasmania did to the men who were sent here.
Read it before visiting Port Arthur or the Cascades Female Factory. The Penguin Classics edition has a useful introduction. The 1927 silent film adaptation was made on location at the actual Port Arthur ruins.