The village of Camden's place in Australia's history is bound up with the Macarthur family, the preeminent family in early colonial New South Wales. Although the Macarthurs are central to this study of Camden, Atkinson also focuses on the people they settled on the land as tenant farmers, and the laborers and trades-people who came to live after the village was laid out in 1841. He discusses their images of themselves, their religious faith, and their relationship with the land, with each other, with their landlords, and with nearby Sydney.