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'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
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
Works about this Work
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Australianesque
i
"Peter Porter wrote a sonnet sequence about Christopher Brennan",
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
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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The Stakes of Settlement : Fences in Ned Kelly and Michael Farrell
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)
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The Case for Ned Kelly's Jerilderie Letter
2014
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 5 May 2014; -
[Essay] : The Jerilderie Letter
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)
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Cop-killer Hero : Recent Words on Ned Kelly
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland , Autumn no. 170 2003; (p. 57-60)
— Review of I Am Ned Kelly 1980 single work biography ; The Jerilderie Letter 1879 single work correspondence -
Handsome Edition
2003
single work
review
— Appears in: Dotlit : The Online Journal of Creative Writing , August vol. 4 no. 1 2003;
— Review of The Jerilderie Letter 1879 single work correspondence -
In Short : Nonfiction
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 17-18 March 2007; (p. 35)
— Review of The Jerilderie Letter 1879 single work correspondence -
Ned's Manifesto : Such was Life
2001
single work
review
— Appears in: The West Australian , 15 September 2001; (p. 6)
— Review of The Jerilderie Letter 1879 single work correspondence -
Hollywood Role Reignites Ned Kelly Debate
2003
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 12 April 2003; (p. B7) -
Germaine Greer, Ned Kelly and Galway
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
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
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)
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)