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e-‐note: True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)
Peter Carey’s 2000 novel, True History of the Kelly Gang challenges and revises our
notions of Australian bushlife, its heroes and antiheroes. The novel is Carey’s second
Booker Prize winning novel, a narrative that explores the infamous Ned Kelly, who
leads a traumatic childhood of violence and abandonment, eventually becoming a
highwayman and killer. The majority of the novel is Ned’s letter of self-‐explanation
to his daughter, a daughter who he has never met. The passionate justification of his
story is told with the intensity of a father longing for his side of the story to be heard,
and the narrative urgency of the text is enhanced through minimal punctuation: “I
lost my father at 12yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silence my
dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this
history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in hell if I speak false”.(p.5)
One of the sources of Carey’s inspiration for this intense voice was Kelly’s famous
Jerilderie Letter that Carey read in the mid-‐1960s. This 8000 word letter was dictated
to Joe Byrne in 1879, and it gives Ned’s own account of his actions, an account that
he was insistent should be published as a pamphlet, but his orders were ignored.
Carey describes it as “an extraordinary document, the passionate voice of a man
who is writing to explain his life, save his life, his reputation”. He was enthralled by
its original style and idiosyncratic voice, a voice that was uneducated but intelligent
and funny. True History is not a ‘real’ novel, a fact that is a little disconcerting when
faced with the title, True History of the Kelly Gang. What impact does the title have
on your approach to the text?
The figure of Ned Kelly is important to the evolution of Australian nationalism
because of the values his legend embodies; namely, that of anti-‐authoritarianism,
loyalty to friends and family, and courage in the face of adversity. Carey’s narrative
technique of historiographical metafiction blurs the boundaries between history and
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text, creating a postmodern aesthetic, one that challenges the reliability of historical
writing. What do you make of his use of archival presentation? The chapters in the
novel are presented as “parcels,” each prefaced by a description of the document
and its source, mimicking archival categorisation. How does this influence your
reception of the text? How is the myth of Ned Kelly re-‐written through this novel?
Read the Jerilderie letter:
http://www2.slv.vic.gov.au/collections/treasures/jerilderieletter/index.html