Charles Cameron Kingston

Federation Father

by Margaret Glass

Melbourne University Press, 1997, [First Edition], b/w photographs and illustrations, hardcover, dustjacket, ISBN 05228477811

As New Condition, minor shelf-wear to dustjacket

'Charles Cameron Kingston was a leading player in Australia's Federation.  Highly intelligent, hardworking and politically honest, he was also a formidable bully with a short fuse.  He was dearly loved by some and vehemently hated by others.  He became Premier of South Australia in 1893, yet Kingston cared little for the norms of polite, colonial society of late nineteenth-century Adelaide and, together with his wife Lucy, was ostracized accordingly.  His alcoholic elder brother was goaled for shooting a cabman; Charles was accused of adultery and subsequently adopted an illegitimate child; he challenged a political opponent to a duel; he brawled in the street.  The notorious Adelaide Hospital dispute haunted the later years of his political career.

In this lively and meticulously researched biography, Margaret Glass seeks answers to these questions, revealing in the process a complex, brilliant and controversial man.'