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Introducing... Ed Hillyer, one of the Best of British 2010

Waterstone's New Voices 2010: The Clay Dreaming tells of a cricket team of Aborigines arriving In Victorian England; including the singular and deeply spiritual King Cole

Ed Wood: Tell us a little about the story.
Ed Hillyer: ‘An Australian Aborigine in Victorian London’ may sound unusual, but it’s historical fiction based on actual events. The Aborigine, dubbed King Cole, came to England as part of the Aboriginal Australian Eleven, a touring cricket team. Sadly, he died here. He’s buried in Meath Gardens, Bethnal Green. Not much else is known about him, so I decided to weave a story around those very basic facts.

EW: What does the real-life story tell us about the people involved?
EH: I like to think I take revenge on history for all those dismissed as insignificant – a native ‘savage’, a sneak-thief sailor, an ordinary spinster.

EW: How did you depart from history and why?
EH: I don’t depart so much as embroider. Cole’s ship docked mid-May, 1868. Forty days later he was dead. I stuck closely to weather reports, tides, even phases of the moon, in addition to the various cricket matches, a meeting of the Anthropological Society of London, et cetera. Everything is real – except for the parts I made up! Hopefully readers won’t be able to see the joins, or even be aware of them.

EW: Was it tough to get into the mores and manners of Victorian society and Aboriginal thinking?
EH: This is a work of imagination and I enjoy that freedom. To set myself free with confidence, I of course read every contemporary edition I could find – newspaper reports, Mayhew, Gissing, Henry James’s travel writing and so forth, the popular fiction of the time. Everyone knew their Bible then so I had to as well. It’s a very scary book, in that you can make it say almost anything according to the parts you pick. I read widely on Aboriginal culture and beliefs, always with an eye to what was then known, or must be intuited. I’ve written Cole as unique, even among his own people. His arrival in London feels like coming home – hence the phrase, ‘the clay dreaming’. Hopefully folks will want to read the book to find out how.

EW: How do you think your day job as a comic-book artist affected the style of the writing?
EH: My writing’s very visual; I see things in almost too much detail. I had to edit a lot to leave room for the reader. Still, as an act of conjuration it certainly worked – a great many things I made up turned out to be true!