The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Flanagan, Roderick
Flanagan, Roderick, historian of New South Wales, was born at Elphin, Roscommon, Ireland, in April 1828, and went with his family to New South Wales in 1840. He was apprenticed to a printer, but soon took to journalism and literature. Mr. Flanagan contributed to the Empire when edited by Mr. (now Sir) Henry Parkes, and in 1854 joined the staff of the Sydney Morning Herald. He commenced a history of New South Wales, and after four years' labour took the MS. to England to be published by Messrs. Sampson Low & Marston. He was seized with a fatal illness whilst revising the sheets of the first volume, and died suddenly in 1861 in London. The history was subsequently published in two volumes, and is a work of great interest and reliability.