This biography tells the story of a woman who lived totally outside the conventions of her time, Mary Bryant, a Cornish fisherman's daughter turned highway robber. Sentenced to hang in 1786, she was instead transported to Australia, from where she made a daring escape, only to be recaptured and 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. May Bryant's life reads like romantic fiction, yet this quietly spoken woman from a respectable home, who was not considered conventionally attractive, lived more dangerously than any fictitious heroine. Judith Cook has pieced together her life from various sources, including Boswell's diaries and archive material in Australia, Holland and the United States.