Caroline's Dilemma

A colonial inheritance saga

Bettina Bradbury

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English

New South Books
01 November 2019

Biography: historical, political & military; History; Australasian & Pacific history

Caroline Kearney faced a heart-breaking dilemma.

Caroline was a 31-year-old mother of six when her husband died in Melbourne in 1865. Having no legal rights herself to the sheep station in Wimmera, Victoria that her late husband owned, she had great hopes that her sons would inherit it. But that was not to be.

Her husband's will, written on his deathbed, offered a reasonable annuity to support her and the children, but it came with a catch. To get that money, she had to move to Ireland with her children and live in a house of her brothers-in-law's choosing. English-born, Caroline had migrated to Australia with her family when she was only seventeen. She had never even been to Ireland. Her husband and his family - unlike her - were Catholic.

This extraordinary book combines storytelling with an historian's detective work. Pieced together from evidence in archives, newspapers, genealogical sites, legal records and old-fashioned legwork, Caroline's Dilemma sheds new light on the workings of colonial gender relationships and family lives that spanned the 19th century globe. It reveals much about women's property rights, migration, settler colonialism, the Irish diaspora and sectarian conflict. It shows how one middle-class woman and her family fought to shape their own lives within the British Empire.

'A truly impressive work of historical recovery, on a major scale'. - Professor Penny Russell, University of Sydney

By: Bettina Bradbury
Imprint: New South Books
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm,
ISBN: 9781742236605
ISBN 10: 174223660X
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 01 November 2019
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Bettina Bradbury is a New Zealand historian who spent most of her career at York University, Canada. She has now retired to Wellington, but spends about half her time in Australia where her children live. An award-winning historian of women, families and the law in various colonial contexts, her most recent book is Wife to Widow, Lives, Laws and Politics in Nineteenth-century Montreal, published by University of British Columbia Press in 2011.