Publisher's Synopsis
James Hardy Vaux (born 1782) was an English-born convict transported to Australia on three separate occasions. He was the author of Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux including A Vocabulary of the Flash Language, first published in 1819, which is regarded as both the first full length autobiography and first dictionary written in Australia. Whilst banished to the Newcastle penal settlement for much of the period from 1811 to 1818, Vaux compiled two works. The first was a dictionary of 'flash' or cant language originally written for use by the commandant of the penal settlement in performing his magisterial duties. An edited edition by Simon Barnard was republished in 2019 as James Hardy Vaux's 1819 Dictionary of Criminal Slang.
