Caroline Leakey, writing as Oliné Keese, published her first and only novel, The Broad Arrow, in 1859. It tells the story of Maida Gwynnham, a young middle-class woman lured into committing a forgery by her deceitful lover, Captain Norwell, and then wrongly convicted of infanticide. The novel’s title describes the arrow that was stamped onto government property, including the clothes worn by convict – a symbol of shame and incarceration. With its ‘fallen woman’ protagonist, its gothic undertones and its exploration of the social and moral implications of the penal system, this little-known novel gives an insight into a significant chapter of Australian history from a uniquely female perspective. In this new critical edition, editor Jenna Mead restores material that was cut when the novel was reissued in a radically abridged version in 1886, restoring for the first time in over a century the complete original text of Leakey’s important work.

Woolmer was a British author who spent 5 years in Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's land). At the time the island state was used to house life prisoners in the notorious Port Arthur prison on its extreme Southernmost tip. Her first and only novel focuses on a lifer prisoner there

"Under the Broad Arrow" is a riveting tale depicting life during the slave trade era in the eighteenth century. It revolves around the two main characters John Fitch and Jane New, with seemingly intertwined lives. The two are first married under very dubious circumstances in which John, an older naval officer with good family connections hopes to exploit the younger Jane, whose family history is nothing to speak of. When Jane is convicted of a crime, her 'husband' finds a loophole to disavow their marriage and Jane is shipped off to the colonies as a slave where she finds a new life and remarries to James New. But trouble is in the offing when a chance encounter of the two former lovers occurs. One that is sure to reignite the bitter feelings of the past...

Reproduction of the original.