Hugh Anderson has already made a name for himself as one of Australia's leading collectors of folk-songs. His Colonial Ballads formed a general introduction the subject; Colonel Minstrel dealt with the goldfields songs of Charles Thatcher. Farewell to Old England continues, through songs and quotations, to tell the story of the early Australian period.
To produce this book, Anderson collected hundreds of broadsides - the printed songs that used to be hawked about the streets - and made a selection of the most interesting of them. To these he has added contemporary passages from diaries, letters, and other sources, creating a most readable story of the convicts, bushrangers, goldminers, and other colourful characters who were the subjects of the broadsides.