image of person or book cover 3715733494765596756.jpg
y separately published work icon Ned Kelly : The Ironclad Australian Bushranger, By One of His Captors single work   children's fiction   children's  
Issue Details: First known date: 1881... 1881 Ned Kelly : The Ironclad Australian Bushranger, By One of His Captors
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

The story of the bushranger Ned Kelly.

Notes

  • Yesterday's Papers states that the Saturday Review of 26 November 1881 reported: 'We have no hesitation in saying that the life of Ned Kelly, the Ironclad Bushranger is as disgraceful and disgusting a production as has ever been printed.'
  • The National Museum of Australia holds a hand-coloured lantern slide (object number 2001.0015.0049.001) that depicts the image that is on the cover of the 1881 edition of this publication.
  • Full text version shows typescript insert frontmatter describing The Imperial Review of 6 January 1882.
  • Users are warned that this work contains terminology that reflects attitudes or language used at the time of publication that are considered inappropriate today.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

      .
      Note/s:
      • Originally published in 38 weekly instalments by the General Publishing Co., London. Source and publication details unknown.

Works about this Work

Colonial Adventure Novels Ken Gelder , Rachael Weaver , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
Irish Republicanism and the Colonial Australian Bushranger Narrative Ken Gelder , Rachael Weaver , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 36 no. 2 2021;

'This article examines a range of colonial Australian Irish bushranger narratives in terms of their investments in revolutionary republicanism, arguing that these become increasingly contested and compromised over time. Beginning with the anonymously published novel Rebel Convicts (1858), it looks at how the fate of transported Irish revolutionaries is imagined in relation to colonial settlement and the convict system. It then turns to Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter (c. 1879), highlighting Kelly’s rhetoric of resistance and mapping his affinities with Irish American republicanism. John Boyle O’Reilly was a Fenian activist, transported to Western Australia in 1867. His novel Moondyne (1878, 1879), rather than unleashing an Irish revolutionary political agenda, is based instead on an English-Catholic bushranger, and its interest in republicanism is in any case displaced from its Australian setting. Ned Kelly’s execution in 1880 gave rise to a new wave of popular narratives, including James Skipp Borlase’s The Iron-Clad Bushranger (1881), which fictionalises Kelly’s career – embroiling him in Irish Fenian plots – and recasts his political affiliations as criminal characteristics. Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms (1882–3) was also published in the wake of the Kelly saga but is notable for its political conservatism, stripping its Irish-Catholic bushrangers of their revolutionary potential to better serve the interests of a powerful pastoral elite. This conservatism is both challenged and magnified in Rosa Praed’s Outlaw and Lawmaker (1893), which celebrates the career of John Boyle O’Reilly while also re-directing his political radicalism into romance. The article concludes that the revolutionary figure of the Irish bushranger is gradually divorced from any radical agency and relegated to a remote chapter of colonial Australia’s history.'

Source: Abstract.

Irish Republicanism and the Colonial Australian Bushranger Narrative Ken Gelder , Rachael Weaver , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 36 no. 2 2021;

'This article examines a range of colonial Australian Irish bushranger narratives in terms of their investments in revolutionary republicanism, arguing that these become increasingly contested and compromised over time. Beginning with the anonymously published novel Rebel Convicts (1858), it looks at how the fate of transported Irish revolutionaries is imagined in relation to colonial settlement and the convict system. It then turns to Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie Letter (c. 1879), highlighting Kelly’s rhetoric of resistance and mapping his affinities with Irish American republicanism. John Boyle O’Reilly was a Fenian activist, transported to Western Australia in 1867. His novel Moondyne (1878, 1879), rather than unleashing an Irish revolutionary political agenda, is based instead on an English-Catholic bushranger, and its interest in republicanism is in any case displaced from its Australian setting. Ned Kelly’s execution in 1880 gave rise to a new wave of popular narratives, including James Skipp Borlase’s The Iron-Clad Bushranger (1881), which fictionalises Kelly’s career – embroiling him in Irish Fenian plots – and recasts his political affiliations as criminal characteristics. Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms (1882–3) was also published in the wake of the Kelly saga but is notable for its political conservatism, stripping its Irish-Catholic bushrangers of their revolutionary potential to better serve the interests of a powerful pastoral elite. This conservatism is both challenged and magnified in Rosa Praed’s Outlaw and Lawmaker (1893), which celebrates the career of John Boyle O’Reilly while also re-directing his political radicalism into romance. The article concludes that the revolutionary figure of the Irish bushranger is gradually divorced from any radical agency and relegated to a remote chapter of colonial Australia’s history.'

Source: Abstract.

Colonial Adventure Novels Ken Gelder , Rachael Weaver , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
Last amended 15 Jan 2018 10:29:55
Settings:
  • Jerilderie, Tocumwal - Jerilderie area, Riverina - Murray area, New South Wales,
  • Glenrowan, Wangaratta area, North East Victoria, Victoria,
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X