True History of the Kelly Gang

Ned Kelly, son of an Irish convict, writes to a daughter he has never met, whose mother fled to America. In headlong, barely punctuated sentences he tells of a boyhood of poverty and police harassment in colonial Victoria, of the mother he adores and her succession of lovers, and of being apprenticed at fifteen to the bushranger Harry Power, one of them. Prison soon follows. Ned insists the police invented the crimes laid at his door out of spite. With his brother Dan, Steve Hart and the opium-smoking Joe Byrne he forms a gang, robs banks and seizes whole towns. To the authorities he is a murderer and thief; to poor Irish Australians he is a hero who defies English rule.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Historical, Crime (assigned by AI)

Set in

Australia, 1860s–1880

First published

2000

Author's age

57 when first published

ISBN

9780702231674 (University of Queensland Press, Australia)

9780571192168 (Faber and Faber, United Kingdom)

9780375410840 (Alfred A. Knopf, United States)

9780375724671 (Vintage, United States)

9780571270156 (Faber and Faber, United Kingdom)

9780571267071 (Faber and Faber, United Kingdom)

More

Wikidata