Caroline Leakey

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CL is best known for her only novel, The Broad Arrow, which is based on observations made during her five-year residence in Tasmania. Her critique of the Australian penal system features a strong female convict protagonist. She also published a well-received book of poetry, and at least several dozen of her didactic and religious tracts and short stories appeared anonymously.

Milestones

8 March 1827

CL was born at Exeter in Devon.
Mead, Jenna. “Caroline Leakey: Body and Authorship”. Auto/Biography Studies, Vol.
8
, No. 2, pp. 198-16.
200

By 18 March 1854

CL published in both London and Hobart Town a collection of poems, Lyra Australis; or, Attempts to Sing in a Strange Land.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1377 (1854): 334
Samuels, Selina, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 230. Gale Research.
230: 245

30 March 1859

CL published her novel The Broad Arrow, Being Passages from the History of Maida Gwynnham, a Lifer, a ground-breaking critique of the Australian penal system, under the pseudonym Oliné Keese.
Leakey, Caroline. “Broad Arrow, 1859”. University of Sydney Library: Australian Studies Resources: Australian Literary and Historical Texts.
prelims

12 July 1881

CL died in Exeter, nearly thirty years after her return to England from Tasmania, following eighteen months of painful illness.
Mead, Jenna. “Caroline Leakey: Body and Authorship”. Auto/Biography Studies, Vol.
8
, No. 2, pp. 198-16.
200
Pike, Douglas, editor. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Melbourne University Press.
5
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1882

Fine Weather Dick, and Other Sketches, a collection of CL 's short stories, was posthumously published in the year following her death.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

Biography

Birth and Family

8 March 1827

CL was born at Exeter in Devon.
Mead, Jenna. “Caroline Leakey: Body and Authorship”. Auto/Biography Studies, Vol.
8
, No. 2, pp. 198-16.
200