Moondyne

Moondyne is an 1879 novel by John Boyle O'Reilly, which was made into a film of the same name in 1913. It is very loosely based on the life of the Western Australian convict escapee and bushranger Moondyne Joe.

Background

John Boyle O'Reilly was a Fenian revolutionary who was transported as a convict to Western Australia. During his time in Western Australia's penal system he would have heard many stories of Moondyne Joe's exploits, although it almost certain that the two men never met. After only thirteen months in Western Australia, O'Reilly escaped the colony on board the American whaling ship Gazelle. On arrival in America he settled in Boston, where he established himself as a respected journalist, newspaper editor, novelist and poet.

Plot summary

Moondyne Joe is a convict who escapes after being victimised and mistreated by a cruel penal system. While on the run he is befriended by indigenous Australians who share with him their secret of a huge gold mine. Joe uses his new-found wealth to return to England and become a respected humanitarian under the assumed name Wyville. Recognised as possessing expertise in penal reform, he is ultimately sent back to Western Australia to help reform the colony's penal system. In the course of this he becomes involved in several subplots including the case of a young woman named Alice Walmsley who has been wrongly convicted of murdering her own child. Wyville/Moondyne succeeds in saving Alice from false imprisonment, helps to reform Western Australia's penal system, and achieves a number of other admirable ends before dying in an attempt to save the life of the story's villain, Isaac Bowman.

The Book

Moondyne
Author(s)	John Boyle O'Reilly
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	P. J. Kennedy
Publication date	1879
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	NA

The novel Moondyne originally appeared as a serial in O'Reilly's newspaper The Pilot in 1878, under the title Moondyne Joe. Applauded by critics, it was published and republished under a variety of titles including:

• Moondyne Joe: A Story from the Underworld
• Moondyne: A Tale of Convict Life in Western Australia
• Moondyne: A Story of Life in West Australia
• Moondyne: An Australian Tale
• Moondyne, or, The Mystery of Mr Wyville.
• The Golden Secret, or Bond and Free
• The Moondyne
• A Tale of Bush and Convict Life

Film

Moondyne
Directed by	W. J. Lincoln
Written by	John Boyle O'Reilly
Starring	George Bryant Godfrey Cass Roy Redgrave
Cinematography	Maurice Bertel
Studio	Lincoln-Cass Films
Release date(s)	1 September 1913[1]
Country	Australia
Language	Silent film English intertitles

In 1913, the Melbourne-based Lincoln-Cass Film Company produced Moondyne, a black and white silent film based on O'Reilly's novel. Directed by W. J. Lincoln, it starred George Bryant as Joe Moondyne, Godfrey Cass as Te Mana Roa, and Roy Redgrave as Isaac Bowman.

See also

Novels portal

• Moondyne (disambiguation)

Further reading

• Ashton, Susanna M. (Spring 2002). "O'Reilly and the Moondyne". History Ireland 10 (1): 38–42. 
• Since 2002, an edited and annotated edition of Moondyne has been available online through University College Cork's Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT). See especially the Preamble.

Notes

1. ^ Mary Bateman, 'Lincoln Cass Filmography', Cinema Papers, June-July 1980 p 175

References

• "Moondyne (1913)". Internet Movie Database (IMDb). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0193331/. Retrieved 2006-06-09. 
• O'Reilly, John Boyle (1878). The Moondyne. Melbourne: George Robertson Publications. 

External links

• Moondyne at the Internet Movie Database