Review of The Broad Arrow: Being Passages from the History of Maida Gwynnham, a Lifer, by Oliné Keese, edited by Jenna Mead

Abstract

This critical edition of The Broad Arrow: Being Passages from the History of Maida Gwynnham, A Lifer, produced by Jenna Mead, is a comprehensive study of the material and textual form of the well-known colonial Australian narrative written by Caroline Woolmer Leakey under the pseudonym Oliné Keese. In many ways this edition is an extension of Mead’s extant and significant work on Leakey’s life, body, and editorial and authorial practice through The Broad Arrow. While some of these conclusions are reiterated in this critical edition of Leakey’s novel, Mead offers significant new insights that push histories of colonial Australian literary practices and cultures in new directions and offers a nuanced understanding of the interplay of genres in colonial Australian fiction. To this end, Mead offers scholars and enthusiasts of colonial Australian fiction a rare opportunity: to read – and thus probably to rediscover – The Broad Arrow in conversation with all its known versions.

The Broad Arrow: Being Passages from the History of Maida Gwynnham, a Lifer, by Oliné Keese, edited by Jenna Mead. Sydney University Press, 2019.