Convicts in Australia Magwitch, a main character of Charles Dickens' 1861 novel "Great Expectations". The most famous convict novel is Marcus Clarke's "For the Term of His Natural Life" (1874), followed by John Boyle O'Reilly's "Moondyne" (1879). "The Broad Arrow" by Caroline Woolmer Leakey was one of the first novels to depict the convict experience, and one of the only to feature a female convict as its protagonist (Marcus Clarke drew on Leakey's book in writing "For the Term of His Natural Life"). Thomas Keneally explores the convict era in his novels "Bring Larks and Heroes" (1967) and "The Playmaker" (1987). Convicts feature
Charles Dickens Jr. letter' caused embarrassment for their uncle, London barrister Henry Fielding Dickens, while the daughters of another uncle, Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens, gave an interview to a newspaper in Australia, where they'd been raised, to make clear that they were not seeking any part of the funds. According to Dickens biographer Claire Tomalin, Charles Walter, only son of Dickens, had already been 'disowned' by the family for marrying Ella Dare, a barmaid. Sydney Margaret went on to marry architect Thomas Bostock Whinney, while Ethel died, in 1936, of an overdose of phenobarbital after being found unconscious in her flat in Chelsea,