Publisher's Synopsis
In 1846, Leandre Fonteinne, a young French monk, formed part of the first Salvado/Serra expedition to the site that would become the mission of New Norcia. A tragic accident there, however, hastened his return to France. This remarkable collection of letters from Fonteinne to his former abbot, Dom Prosper Gueranger, at Solesmes in north-western France, over the next fifty years, vividly describes Fonteinne's struggles with his own insecurities, with unemployment and with marriage. It also records, in fascinating detail, life in the nineteenth century Swan River Colony and in France: ""Fonteinne was not a man of action, rather a fly on the wall, but a fly with a tape recorder. He gives us the rumour, the tensions, the slights, the hopes, the speculations that filled the missionaries."" Peter Gilet, Fonteinne's Story. Peter Gilet is a published historian who has taught in Australia and overseas. Born in Sydney to a part- Belgian family, he gained a BA (Hons) in French at the University of Sydney, an MA in Mediaeval French at Melbourne University, and a PhD in Arthurian Legend at the University of Poitiers in France. In 2009, Peter worked as a volunteer in the archives at New Norcia translating documents from French; then, in 2010, he became the inaugural Abbot Placid Spearritt Memorial Scholar. His scholarship involved the transcription and translation of Leandre Fonteinne's letters, the results of which are contained in this book. He currently lives in Subiaco and works at the University of Western Australia library, preparing a study on the ""universal folk tale"". Leen Charles is the former City Archivist of Ghent (Belgium), an important mediaeval city with archives dating back to 1078. She is a member of the Flemish Society of Archivists and an overseas member of the British Archives and Records Association. She started working in the Ghent city archives in 1988 and was Director from 1996 until 2011. She has written many books and articles on archival and historical matters and she is co-author of the First Historical Atlas of Ghent, using maps and other illustrations as a means to tell the history and development of the city. Leen was acting archivist at New Norcia in 2012 and worked in the monastery archives again in 2014. She is currently the archivist for the Monastery of Orval in Belgium.
