Book review: Mrs Kelly

But his mother Ellen Kelly had an interesting life herself.

Biographer Grantlee Kieza has captured her story in Mrs Kelly.

The Kelly family matriarch arrived in Melbourne in 1841 at the age of nine.

Like many pioneering women, Ellen married a convict and lived through a hard life with famine, droughts and other hardships.

She listened through the prison wall while her eldest son was hanged and saw the charred remains of another who'd died in a police shoot-out.

The book includes pictures of Mrs Kelly and her family.