Alan Atkinson Bundle: Elizabeth & John and The House of Blue Glass

Purchase Elizabeth & John and The House of Blue Glass together and save.

Elizabeth & John is a landmark and revealing joint biography of Elizabeth and John Macarthur, from one of Australia’s most respected historians.

In Elizabeth and John, Alan Atkinson, the prizewinning author of The Europeans in Australia, draws on his work on the Macarthur family over 50 years to explore the dynamics of their strong and sinewy marriage, and family life across two generations. With the truth of Elizabeth and John Macarthur’s relationship much more complex and deeply human than other writers have suggested, Atkinson provides a finely drawn portrait of a powerful partnership.

Alan Atkinson
Published October 2024
Paperback
528 pages 
210mm x 135mm
ISBN 9781761170317

In The House of Blue Glass, historian Alan Atkinson explores the life of Penelope Lucas.

While she is known as the Macarthur family governess, Atkinson reveals Penelope was primarily an accountant whose bookkeeping work made an important difference to the Macarthurs’ success.

Alan Atkinson
Published March 2026
Paperback
368 pages 
234mm x 153mm
ISBN 9781761170379

About the author

Alan Atkinson is a historian with postgraduate degrees from the University of Sydney, University of Dublin, Trinity College, and the Australian National University. He has taught at Murdoch University, the University of Western Australia and the University of New England over a period of more than thirty years. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and a Visiting Fellow at the universities of Cambridge, London and Melbourne, and at the Australian National University. Atkinson is the author of Europeans in Australia, volumes I–III (volume III won the Victorian Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History), and Elizabeth and John, winner of the 2023 NSW Premier's History Awards, Australian History Prize.