AustLit logo

AustLit

NLA image of person
Thomas Keneally Thomas Keneally i(A14782 works by) (a.k.a. Thomas Michael Keneally; Mick Keneally; Tom Keneally; T. Keneally)
Also writes as: Bernard Coyle ; William Coyle
Born: Established: 1935 Sydney, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Male
Heritage: Irish
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
* AustLit's TAL data covers the period 2009-2016, with a small number of courses logged in 2008. Data for 2013 is estimated to cover only half of the eligible courses. Please use this data with caution and contact us if you plan to use it in research or analysis.

Details of Works Taught

Text Unit Name Institution Year
y separately published work icon Another Country Asylum; Outsiders Rosie Scott (editor), Thomas Keneally (editor), Broadway : Halstead Press , 2004 Z1208620 2004 anthology poetry autobiography prose diary correspondence (taught in 2 units) Comprises part of Southerly volume 64, number 1, 2004. Writing and Justice University of Sydney 2010 (Semester 1)
y separately published work icon Another Country Asylum; Outsiders Rosie Scott (editor), Thomas Keneally (editor), Broadway : Halstead Press , 2004 Z1208620 2004 anthology poetry autobiography prose diary correspondence (taught in 2 units) Comprises part of Southerly volume 64, number 1, 2004. Writing and Justice University of Sydney 2008 (Semester 1)
Text Unit Name Institution Year
y separately published work icon The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith Thomas Keneally , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1972 Z559274 1972 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 4 units)

'When Jimmie Blacksmith marries a white woman, the backlash from both Jimmie's tribe and white society initiates a series of dramatic events. As Jimmie tries to survive between two cultures, tensions reach a head when the Newbys, Jimmie's white employers, try to break up his marriage. The Newby women are murdered and Jimmie flees, pursued by police and vigilantes. The hunt intensifies as further murders are committed, and concludes with tragic results.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (HarperCollins ed.)

LIterary Interpretations Flinders University 2016 (Semester 2)
y separately published work icon The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith Thomas Keneally , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1972 Z559274 1972 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 4 units)

'When Jimmie Blacksmith marries a white woman, the backlash from both Jimmie's tribe and white society initiates a series of dramatic events. As Jimmie tries to survive between two cultures, tensions reach a head when the Newbys, Jimmie's white employers, try to break up his marriage. The Newby women are murdered and Jimmie flees, pursued by police and vigilantes. The hunt intensifies as further murders are committed, and concludes with tragic results.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (HarperCollins ed.)

Writing Australia Queensland University of Technology 2009 (Semester 2)
y separately published work icon The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith Thomas Keneally , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1972 Z559274 1972 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 4 units)

'When Jimmie Blacksmith marries a white woman, the backlash from both Jimmie's tribe and white society initiates a series of dramatic events. As Jimmie tries to survive between two cultures, tensions reach a head when the Newbys, Jimmie's white employers, try to break up his marriage. The Newby women are murdered and Jimmie flees, pursued by police and vigilantes. The hunt intensifies as further murders are committed, and concludes with tragic results.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (HarperCollins ed.)

Writing Australia Queensland University of Technology 2010 (Semester 2)
y separately published work icon The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith Thomas Keneally , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1972 Z559274 1972 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 4 units)

'When Jimmie Blacksmith marries a white woman, the backlash from both Jimmie's tribe and white society initiates a series of dramatic events. As Jimmie tries to survive between two cultures, tensions reach a head when the Newbys, Jimmie's white employers, try to break up his marriage. The Newby women are murdered and Jimmie flees, pursued by police and vigilantes. The hunt intensifies as further murders are committed, and concludes with tragic results.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (HarperCollins ed.)

Representing Aboriginal People, History and Place University of Technology, Sydney 2009
Text Unit Name Institution Year
y separately published work icon A Country Too Far : Writings on Asylum Seekers Thomas Keneally (editor), Rosie Scott (editor), Melbourne : Penguin Books , 2013 6426357 2013 anthology autobiography biography poetry short story essay (taught in 1 units)

'One of the central moral issues of our time is the question of asylum seekers, arguably the most controversial subject in Australia today.

'In this landmark anthology, twenty-seven of Australia's finest writers have focused their intelligence and creativity on the theme of the dispossessed, bringing a whole new perspective of depth and truthfulness to what has become a fraught, distorted war of words. This anthology confirms that the experience of seeking asylum – the journeys of escape from death, starvation, poverty or terror to an imagined paradise – is part of the Australian mindset and deeply embedded in our culture and personal histories.

'A Country Too Far is a tour de force of stunning fiction, memoir, poetry and essays. Edited by award-winning writers Rosie Scott and Tom Keneally, and featuring contributors including Anna Funder, Christos Tsiolkas, Elliot Perlman, Gail Jones, Raimond Gaita, Les Murray, Rodney Hall and Geraldine Brooks, this rich anthology is by turns thoughtful, fierce, evocative, lyrical and moving, and always extraordinarily powerful.

'A Country Too Far' makes an indispensable contribution to the national debate.' (Publisher's blurb)

Literature and Human Rights Australian National University 2014 (Semester 1)
Text Unit Name Institution Year
y separately published work icon The Great Shame : A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New Thomas Keneally , Milsons Point : Random House , 1998 Z820476 1998 single work prose (taught in 1 units)

"In the nineteenth century, Ireland lost half of its population to famine, emigration to the United States and Canada, and the forced transportation of convicts to Australia. The forebears of Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List, were victims of that tragedy, and in The Great Shame Keneally has written an astonishing, monumental work that tells the full story of the Irish diaspora with the narrative grip and flair of a great novel. Based on unique research among little-known sources, this masterly book surveys eighty years of Irish history through the eyes of political prisoners--including Keneally's ancestors--who left Ireland in chains and eventually found glory, in one form or another, in Australia and America.

We meet William Smith O'Brien, leader of an uprising at the height of the Irish Famine, who rose from solitary confinement in Australia to become the Mandela of his age; Thomas Francis Meagher, whose escape from Australian captivity led to a glittering American career as an orator, a Union general, and governor of Montana; John Mitchel, who became a Confederate newspaper reporter, gave two of his sons to the Southern cause, was imprisoned with Jefferson Davis--and returned to Ireland to become mayor of Tipperary; and John Boyle O'Reilly, who fled a life sentence in Australia to become one of nineteenth-century America's leading literary lights.

Through the lives of many such men and women--famous and obscure, some heroes and some fools (most a little of both), all of them stubborn, acutely sensitive, and devastatingly charming--we become immersed in the Irish experience and its astonishing history. From Ireland to Canada and the United States to the bush towns of Australia, we are plunged into stories of tragedy, survival, and triumph. All are vividly portrayed in Keneally's spellbinding prose, as he reveals the enormous influence the exiled Irish have had on the English-speaking world."

-Publisher's blurb.

Irish Literature - Idea Of Ireland University of Notre Dame 2014 (Semester 1)
X