Kelley was a late-nineteenth-century outlaw whose larger than life exploits have been the subject of many retellings in films and novels. The son of impoverished Irish convicts, Kelley has been embraced as a symbol of the harsh colonial regime; as someone whose violent life was a response to the official violence of the colonial government.
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2001)*
The title of Carey’s best-seller is misleading. The True History of the Kelly Gang is not a “true history” at all, but rather an imagined autobiography of Australia’s greatest folk-hero, the bushranger Ned Kelly and his band of Irish-Australian outlaws.