The_Broad_Arrow
The Broad Arrow
Work by Caroline Woolmer Leakey
The Broad Arrow; Being Passages from the History of Maida Gwynnham, a Lifer is an 1859 novel published by the English writer Caroline Woolmer Leakey under the pseudonym Oliné Keese. Set in Van Diemen's Land, it was one of the first novels to describe the Australian convict system and one of only two colonial novels to feature a female convict as its main character.[1] It has been described as a precursor of the better-known For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke (1870–72),[2] who used Leakey's book as a source for his story.[3]