'Mind you die like a Kelly, son.' In these words of Ned Kelly's mother, we hear the pride and despair of a dispossessed people. The Kelly clan had hoped for a better lot in Australia than in Ireland. In the new colony, however, they found themselves once again destined to lives of poverty, rejection and powerlessness. With their dream of dignity, freedom and land denied them, some succumbed, others rebelled. Since his death in the old Melbourne Gaol on 11 November 1880, Ned Kelly has become a part of the land and its memories. In this evocative, imaginative recreation of the Kelly story, John Molony unravels the tangled skein of a life over which legend has cast a spell. This new, illustrated edition of Molony's classic work will appeal to all those people who are captivated by the Kelly legend. 'As Professor Molony has shown, the echoes can reach out across a century and grab Australians by the throat. Who among us has stood out against oppression with the courage and flair of that boy from Greta?' Overland '. . . a happy combination of accurate scholarship and the telling of a story . . . goes a long way to providing the answers to two central questions: Who was Ned Kelly, and why did he become important in the history of Australia?' Manning Clark