AustLit

'Ned Kelly is an Australian national icon. A nineteenth-century bushranger, murderer, thief and bandit who survived in the Australian bush is now a symbol for the nation writ large. Kelly has come to represent ‘quintessential’ Australian values – those of the anti-establishment, egalitarian underdog, fighting corrupt authorities and championing a higher form of justice. Kelly is part of our heritage and folklore, our tourist trails, songs, and national iconography.' (Introduction)

'Bushrangers are national legends in Australia, and the names of figures like Captain Thunderbolt, Ben Hall, Jack Donohoe, and, of course, Ned Kelly, are well known to many. In her first book, Meg Foster sets out to reveal the unknown histories of the country’s ‘other’ bushrangers: those who were not the white men celebrated by the legend. Bushrangers who were female, Indigenous Australian, Chinese, or African-American, she argues, have been left out of ‘the national mythos’ (2), ignored in public culture and popular memory. Their extraordinary lives and stories are the focus of Boundary Crossers.' (Introduction)

'How do you write a biography of someone who left no archive? This is the unenviable task Rachel Franks has set for herself in this tantalising biography and social history. Unlike other well-known figures of the criminal legal system, such as Victorian prison governor John Buckley Castieau, who left diaries across his 30-year term, executioner Robert Howard’s life is discovered only through the sensationalist press, sheriff’s reports of executions, coronial inquests on the bodies of those he killed, and the series of prisoners who walked his scaffold.' (Introduction)