Abel Magwitch must have first seen the convicts who worked at unloading, and the marshes at Cooling, north-east of Chatham, off which the galley ships lay - scenes which would play a part in the story of his fictional self, Pip, and Pip's benefactor, Magwitch. Abel Magwitch Abel Magwitch is a fictional character from Charles Dickens's 1861 novel, "Great Expectations". Charles Dickens set his story in about 1800, setting his character Abel Magwitch to meet a man called Compeyson at the Epsom Races. Compeyson, Dickens wrote, had been brought up in a boarding school and was an attractive, charming gentleman. Magwitch, at
Convicts in Australia heavily in Patrick White's take on the Eliza Fraser story, the 1976 novel "A Fringe of Leaves". Convictism is canvassed in Bryce Courtenay's "Australian trilogy": "The Potato Factory" (1995), "Tommo & Hawk" (1997) and "Solomon's Song" (1999). The title character of Peter Carey's 1997 novel "Jack Maggs" is a reworking of Dickens' Magwitch character. Many modern works of Tasmanian Gothic focus on the state's convict past, including "Gould's Book of Fish" (2001) by Richard Flanagan, a fictionalised account of convict artist William Buelow Gould's imprisonment at Macquarie Harbour. Kate Grenville based the novel "The Secret River" (2005) on the life