Royal (Roy) Tasman Bridges was a journalist and author, born in Hobart. He is remembered as one of Tasmania’s most prolific novelists who wrote 36 books across 41 years, and 79 works across his lifetime. Bridges worked as a journalist in Hobart, Sydney and Melbourne between 1904 and 1930, including fourteen years writing with The Age. He was a founding member of the Australian Journalists Association in 1911.
Bridges’ writing is described as full of feeling, which reflected his journalistic curiosity and skill for observation. His work makes a valuable contribution to social history because it deals with the lives of convicts and bushrangers in Victoria and Tasmania.
Bridges worked across genres as diverse as war short stories, romance, historical fiction, horror novels and children’s adventure stories. He evokes compassion for the victims of the convict transportation system and explores religious intolerance. His final work, Youth Triumphant, was published posthumously in 1954 as a serial in the Saturday Evening Mercury.
