It’s hard to fathom that 25 years have passed since Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang was published to such acclaim. A glance at the novel’s entry in the AustLit database gives a sense of the phenomenon. It has gone through 15 editions, won 17 awards – including the Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize – and been the subject of more than 200 reviews and articles. It has been translated into 28 languages and regularly finds itself on must-read lists of Australian novels.

Even before Carey’s novel, Ned Kelly was a cultural icon – a beloved (by some) rogue and outlaw, with a status both historical and mythological. His story was well known; his life had been subject to numerous treatments, fictional and non-fictional, across a range of media, including Sidney Nolan’s powerful series of paintings.

Carey’s novel gives a sense of the extent of Kelly’s popularity – or at least notoriety – and the widespread sympathy he garnered. What makes his rendering special, though, is its sustained use of the vernacular. Inspired by the poetic power of Ned Kelly’s manifesto, the Jerilderie Letter, Carey produced a novel written in Kelly’s voice, with such eloquence that it becomes a masterclass in mimicry.

The novel’s central and clever conceit is that True History of the Kelly Gang is a manuscript of Kelly’s journals written to his daughter. The “stained and dog-eared papers” had been stolen, rediscovered, and brought to the “Melbourne Public Library”. The novel comprises a series of numbered parcels of text, framed by cataloguing descriptions of the kind that might be used by an archivist or librarian.

Much of the novel follows and draws on known people and events from historical records. Carey is careful to include a statement of sources. But he also incorporates sweeping themes of love and betrayal, honour and justice, oppression and resistance, and the old chestnut of mateship. The story explores moral ambiguity – what happens when otherwise decent people find themselves at the mercy of an unjust system over which they have little control; it is also, as John Kinsella has pointed out, thoroughly Oedipal.

True History of the Kelly Gang recounts what is known about Kelly. Like his historical counterpart, Carey’s fictional Ned Kelly is the third of eight children born to poor Irish parents: John “Red” Kelly, a transported convict, and Eileen Quinn. The novel describes his childhood in rural Victoria, his rescue of a drowning boy, the green sash he receives as a reward, and his association with the bushranger Harry Power.

Early convictions lead to time in prison as a mere teenager in the 1870s. Then, in 1878, Kelly attacks Constable Fitzpatrick, who had arrested his brother, Dan. Warrants are issued for the arrest of both Kelly brothers and their mother Eileen. Eileen is imprisoned and Ned and Dan go into hiding. Later, they are joined by Joe Byrne and Steve Hart.

The novel charts the gang’s ambush and killing of three police........

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