Kelly

by Eric Lambert

Frederick Muller Limited, 1964 [First Edition], hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, minor rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, previous owners gift inscription on front flyleaf, price-clipped dustjacket shows some edge and shelf wear with some rubbing, bumping, creasing and chipping to edges and corners (see photographs)

“The highest compliment you can pay to an Australian is to say he is as game as Ned Kelly, and the name carries respect for most Australians who value their freedom.  It was Kelly who took to the Bush and conducted a long and effective war against the squatters who invaded their land and the police who chose to support them.
Dressed in armour hammered out of ploughshares, Kelly and his gang made their last stand against the law at Glenrowan in Victoria, and though wounded and ill-treated by his captors he survived to be tried and hanged at the age of 26.  Minutes after his death the admiration of the ordinary Australian for the name of Kelly grew fast into a symbol of the Aussie who is not to be put upon.  It is not altogether in jest that he is called Australia’s patron saint.
In dealing with a subject that has preoccupied him for many years, Eric Lambert has wed fiction and fact and given shape to a myth that is as exciting a story as the author of The Twenty Thousands Thieves has yet written.”