image of person or book cover 4182301048550346612.jpg
Cover image courtesy of publisher.
y separately published work icon The Jerilderie Letter single work   correspondence  
Issue Details: First known date: 1879... 1879 The Jerilderie Letter
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'I have been wronged and my mother and four or five men lagged innocent and is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also who has no alternative only to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed big bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splaw-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or english landlords which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police…

'Outlaw, murderer, self-proclaimed victim, Ned Kelly is an Australian icon. But who was he? Kelly’s extraordinary achievement is to have provided his own answer to that question. The Jerilderie Letter is his remarkable manifesto and a startling record of his voice.

'Kelly delivered his letter, which Joe Byrne had diligently written out, on Monday 10 February 1879, immediately after his gang had held up the Bank of New South Wales in Jerilderie. He gives an impassioned defence of his actions, condemns those who have wronged him, and sends a chilling warning to those who may yet defy him.

'This illustrated edition, transcribed from the manuscript now housed in the State Library of Victoria, includes a fascinating new introduction by the historian Alex McDermott. The Jerilderie Letter remains one of the most astonishing documents in Australian history.' (Publication summary)

Reading Australia

Reading Australia

This work has Reading Australia teaching resources.

Unit Suitable For

AC: Year 10 (NSW Stage 5)

Themes

Australian history, Australian identity, identity, justice, memory, morality, myth-making, rebellion

General Capabilities

Critical and creative thinking, Ethical understanding, Information and communication technology, Literacy, Personal and social

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

      1879 .
      Extent: 56p.
      (Manuscript) assertion
      Note/s:
      • Letter dictated by Ned Kelly to Joe Byrne.
      • Original held at the La Trobe Australian Manuscripts Collection, State Library of Victoria. No. MS 13361
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Trial of Ned Kelly Roger Simpson , Richmond : Heinemann Education Australia , 1977 Z507643 1977 single work drama Richmond : Heinemann Education Australia , 1977 pg. 52-61
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Authenticated Electronic Editions Just In Time Markup Server Australian Defence Force Academy. Australian Scholarly Editions Centre , Canberra : Australian Defence Force Academy. Australian Scholarly Editions Centre , 2005 10879360 2005 website

    'The Authenticated Electronic Editions project is producing robust, flexible, long-lasting and readily accessible electronic editions of textual works. A particularly innovative part of the project is the development and use of Just In Time Markup (JITM). This is designed to solve a major problem associated with electronic texts: the maintenance of the integrity of the core text while it is being proliferated, translated across platforms, manipulated, supplemented and analysed.'

    Source: The Authenticated Electronic Editions Project (http://asecentre.org/JITM/index.html). (Sighted: 21/03/2017)

    Canberra : Australian Defence Force Academy. Australian Scholarly Editions Centre , 2005
    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Text Publishing , 2012 .
      image of person or book cover 4182301048550346612.jpg
      Cover image courtesy of publisher.
      Extent: [30], 82p.p.
      Description: illus., facsims, ports
      Note/s:
      ISBN: 9781921922336 (pbk.)
      Series: y separately published work icon Text Classics Text Publishing (publisher), Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2012- Z1851461 2012 series - publisher novel 'Great books by great Australian storytellers.' (Text website.)

Works about this Work

Australianesque i "Peter Porter wrote a sonnet sequence about Christopher Brennan", Michael Farrell , 2022 single work poetry
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , January–February no. 439 2022; (p. 27) Best of Australian Poems 2022 2022; (p. 12)
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.

The Stakes of Settlement : Fences in Ned Kelly and Michael Farrell James Jiang , 2021 single work essay
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , August no. 102 2021;

'William Blake’s articulation of the ‘bounding line’ as ‘the great and golden rule of art, as well as of life’ may seem a far-fetched place to start an examination of the poetics of the fence in Australian poetry. The line’s cosmic necessity and ethical force were being asserted by Blake in the context of a long-running dispute amongst art theorists as to whether outline or colour was the predominant element in the pictorial arts. But my mind reverts to this quotation when thinking about the cathected attitude to lines, boundaries, and fences that is emblematic of the settler-colonial establishment in this country in both its agrarian and suburban contexts.' (Introduction)

The Case for Ned Kelly's Jerilderie Letter Ken Gelder , 2014 single work essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 5 May 2014;
[Essay] : The Jerilderie Letter Germaine Greer , 2013 single work essay
— Appears in: Reading Australia 2013-;

'The Jerilderie Letter was written for publication, but it is not a work of literature. It is not history either as it makes no claim to objectivity. It has been called a confession, but it is not one, because the writer expresses no shame, no guilt and no repentance. It is kin to the speeches that once condemned men were allowed to make when they mounted the scaffold where they were to die, in which they told their versions of the events that had led them to that point. The letter’s author, notorious bushranger Ned Kelly, knew when he composed it that he was certain to hang.' (Introduction)

Cop-killer Hero : Recent Words on Ned Kelly Jeff Sparrow , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 170 2003; (p. 57-60)

— Review of I Am Ned Kelly John Molony , 1980 single work biography ; The Jerilderie Letter Ned Kelly , 1879 single work correspondence
Handsome Edition Donna Lee Brien , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Dotlit : The Online Journal of Creative Writing , August vol. 4 no. 1 2003;

— Review of The Jerilderie Letter Ned Kelly , 1879 single work correspondence
In Short : Nonfiction Paul Collins , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 17-18 March 2007; (p. 35)

— Review of The Jerilderie Letter Ned Kelly , 1879 single work correspondence
Ned's Manifesto : Such was Life Tom Austen , 2001 single work review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 15 September 2001; (p. 6)

— Review of The Jerilderie Letter Ned Kelly , 1879 single work correspondence
Hollywood Role Reignites Ned Kelly Debate Justine Toh , 2003 single work column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 12 April 2003; (p. B7)
Germaine Greer, Ned Kelly and Galway Frank Molloy , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Margin , November no. 58 2002; (p. 15-17)
Frank Molloy reports on the public lecture given by Germaine Greer at the twelfth Irish Australian Studies conference held in Galway in June 2002. The lecture was entitled 'Ned Kelly and the Irish Inheritance'.
The Kelly Raid on Jerilderie One Who Was there , 1958 single work biography
— Appears in: Jerilderie : 100 years 1958; (p. 63-120)
A first-hand account of the raid and armed robbery by the Kelly gang at Jerilderie, Victoria in 1878, and the subsequent search and capture of Ned Kelly.
Representing the Irish Body: Reading Ned's Armor Penelope Ingram , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 20 no. 1 2006; (p. 12-19)
The Bushranger's Voice : Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang (2000) and Ned Kelly's Jerilderie Letter (1879) Paul Eggert , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: College Literature , July vol. 34 no. 3 2007; (p. 120-139) The AustLit Anthology of Criticism 2010; (p. 3)
Last amended 23 May 2017 10:37:17
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