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'The text follows the romance between a reckless Australian maiden, Elsie Valliant, and a brash Irish Radical turned Australian Bushranger, Morres Blake - alias, Moonlight - in the untamed wilds of Leichardt's Land, a fictional area of Queensland...Praed's Outlaw and Lawmaker explores the intricacies of emerging Australian colonial life in light of the many questions concerning women's rights, roles and positions in the new world.'
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Irish Republicanism and the Colonial Australian Bushranger Narrative
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.
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'Altogether Better-Bred Looking' : Race and Romance in the Australian Novels of Rosa Praed
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 8 2008; (p. 31-44) 'This essay connects Praed's writing with late nineteenth and early twentieth century history with particular reference to the race issue. It explores races discourses -- Anglo-Saxonism, Celticism and Social Darwininism -- as thse appear in range of Praed's work and shows how scientific racism shaped Praed's reaction to Black Australia.' -
Shrouded Histories : Outlaw and Lawmaker, Republican Politics and Women's Interests
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 21 no. 1 2003; (p. 32-42) This essay reads the novel of expatriate colonial writer Rosa Praed, Outlaw and Lawmaker (1893), as an intervention in the public debate about the Irish question and the marriage question which were vigorously discussed in the late 1880s in Britain, the United States and Australia. Although the novel belongs to the genre of colonial romance, Ferres argues that its author 'speaks from a range of different positions within these debates, and thus underlines the inherent difficulty of characterising women's interests' (32). -
Literary Imaginings of the Bunya
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , November vol. 9 no. 2 2002; (p. 65-79) 'By the time that Europeans became acquainted with the bunya, the gum tree was already well established as the iconic Australian tree. The genus Eucalyptus, with all its locally specific variants, was both distinctive to the continent and widely dispersed throughout it. In contrast, the bunya tree (classified as Araucaria bidwillii in 1843) grew in a small area of what is now South-East Queensland and was seen by few Europeans before the 1840s, when Moreton Bay was opened to free settlement. The physical distinctiveness of the bunya tree, and stories of the large gatherings which accompanied the triennial harvesting ofits nut, aroused the curiosity of early European explorers and settlers, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the bunya tree achieved a special status in local civic culture. Although heavy logging had largely destroyed the great bunya forests, the tree was planted extensively in school grounds, around war memorials and in long avenues in parks.' (Introduction) -
Whiteness Under Arms: Rolf Boldrewood and Rosa Praed's Outlaw Narratives
1999
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , Spring vol. 44 no. 3 1999; (p. 76-88)
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Romance and Comedy From Two Early Australian Women Writers
1988
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 10 December 1988; (p. B4)
— Review of Outlaw and Lawmaker 1893 single work novel ; Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill : An Australian Novel 1888 single work novel -
Marriage and Mateship in the Colonies
1988
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Society , October 1988; (p. 48-49)
— Review of Outlaw and Lawmaker 1893 single work novel ; An Australian Girl 1890 single work novel -
Australian Women Writers : The Literary Heritage
1989
single work
review
— Appears in: Belles-Lettres (US) , Spring vol. 4 no. 3 1989; (p. 7)
— Review of Outlaw and Lawmaker 1893 single work novel ; An Australian Girl 1890 single work novel ; Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land : A Story of Australian Life 1915 single work novel ; The Bond of Wedlock : A Tale of London Life 1887 single work novel ; A Black Sheep 1888-1889 single work novel -
Literary Imaginings of the Bunya
2002
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Queensland Review , November vol. 9 no. 2 2002; (p. 65-79) 'By the time that Europeans became acquainted with the bunya, the gum tree was already well established as the iconic Australian tree. The genus Eucalyptus, with all its locally specific variants, was both distinctive to the continent and widely dispersed throughout it. In contrast, the bunya tree (classified as Araucaria bidwillii in 1843) grew in a small area of what is now South-East Queensland and was seen by few Europeans before the 1840s, when Moreton Bay was opened to free settlement. The physical distinctiveness of the bunya tree, and stories of the large gatherings which accompanied the triennial harvesting ofits nut, aroused the curiosity of early European explorers and settlers, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the bunya tree achieved a special status in local civic culture. Although heavy logging had largely destroyed the great bunya forests, the tree was planted extensively in school grounds, around war memorials and in long avenues in parks.' (Introduction) -
Shrouded Histories : Outlaw and Lawmaker, Republican Politics and Women's Interests
2003
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 21 no. 1 2003; (p. 32-42) This essay reads the novel of expatriate colonial writer Rosa Praed, Outlaw and Lawmaker (1893), as an intervention in the public debate about the Irish question and the marriage question which were vigorously discussed in the late 1880s in Britain, the United States and Australia. Although the novel belongs to the genre of colonial romance, Ferres argues that its author 'speaks from a range of different positions within these debates, and thus underlines the inherent difficulty of characterising women's interests' (32). -
'Altogether Better-Bred Looking' : Race and Romance in the Australian Novels of Rosa Praed
2008
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 8 2008; (p. 31-44) 'This essay connects Praed's writing with late nineteenth and early twentieth century history with particular reference to the race issue. It explores races discourses -- Anglo-Saxonism, Celticism and Social Darwininism -- as thse appear in range of Praed's work and shows how scientific racism shaped Praed's reaction to Black Australia.' -
Romance Fiction of the 1890s
1996
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The 1890s : Australian Literature and Literary Culture 1996; (p. 150-164) -
Praed and the "Picturesque" in 'Outlaw and Lawmaker'
1996
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Margin , April no. 38 1996; (p. 2-5)
- Queensland,
- Queensland,
- 1800-1899