Macmillan London Ltd 1993

Mary Bryant's life reads like romantic fiction, yet this quietly spoken woman from a respectable home lived more dangerously than any fictitious heroine. A cornish fisherman's daughter turned highway robber, Mary Bryant was sentenced to hang in 1786. Instead she was transported to Australia, from where she made a daring escape, only to be brought back to London chained to the ship's deck in an open cage. Imprisoned in Newgate, and again threatened with death, her cause was championed by James Boswell, who was so taken by her that he defended her at her trial, winning her first a reprieve and then a full pardon. In her search for Mary Bryant, Cook has tracked down archivak material in Australia, Holland and the United States, as well as in the UK, including Boswell's diaries, to tell for the first time the full story of an exceptional woman who lived totally outside the conventions of her time...