Shortlist announced for one of Australia's premier history book awards

The judges for the award - which recognises high-quality published work that makes a "significant contribution to an understanding of Tasmania's past" - announced the four finalists earlier this month.

The award was set up to commemorate and celebrate the contributions of the late Joan Green and her late husband, Richard (Dick), a former Launceston mayor, and seeks to celebrate and promote books on Tasmanian history and cultural heritage, including historical fiction based on research.

The Greens were key players in the establishment of the National Trust and were strong supporters of the arts in the state.

The four shortlisted novels focus on aspects of the state's past, like its first great landscape painter, the Indigenous resistance in the Black War, Van Diemen's Land's horticulture, and fiction set in a bygone era.

The prize - of $25,000 - makes the Green Family Award one of Australia's premier awards for historical research and writing.

The shortlisted works are:

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott,

Set in a vividly captured bygone Tasmania, Limberlost is the third novel from award-winning author of Flames and The Rain Heron, and an extraordinary chronicle of life and land, of carnage and kindness, blood ties and love.

Gardeners, Plant Collectors, Friends: Hobart Town and beyond by Ann Cripps

Ann Cripps has profiled and interwoven the stories of over 25 men and women of note who contributed to the horticultural history of Van Diemen's Land, delving into early books, letters, diaries and other rare manuscripts to bring them to life.

John Glover: Patterdale Farm and the revelation of the Australian landscape by Ron Radford

Ron Radford addresses and examines John Glover's paintings and farming at his Patterdale estate in Northern Tasmania. He also records the recent saving of Glover's 200-year-old Patterdale farmhouse and the re-creation of his studio and garden. Dr Radford stresses that Glover created Australia's first great landscape canvases, many poignantly depicting the original Palawa inhabitants.

Tongerlongeter: First Nations leader and Tasmanian war hero by Henry Reynolds and Nicholas Clements.

Tongerlongeter is an epic story of resistance, sorrow and survival. Leader of the Oyster Bay nation of south-east Tasmania in the 1820s and '30s. Tongerlongeter and his allies prosecuted the most effective frontier resistance ever mounted on Australian soil.

The winner of the Dick and Joan Green Family Award for Tasmanian history, which is managed by the University of Tasmania, will be announced in August.