The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka

The book received generally positive reviews. In a review for The Conversation, Zora Simic called the book a "career-defining work of scholarship and storytelling" and praised the "power and flair of Wright’s narrative voice". Simic emphasised the importance of Wright's feminist retelling of Australian history, writing that "while Wright’s history offers one of the richest social histories of the goldfields yet, its lasting legacy will be as feminist history".^[6] In a review for The Guardian, Alison Bartlett wrote that the book was "part of an ongoing genre of revisionist histories which seek not only to add gender, sexuality, race and class into existing national histories, but to reimagine such narratives as rich social dramas not unlike our own place and time".^[7] A review in Australian Book Review called the work an "extraordinary new history",^[8] while a review in ABC News wrote that the book "adds to our understanding of the men who were in Ballarat at the time as much as it contributes to our understanding of women's history".^[9]

Robyn Annear, reviewing the book in The Monthly, praised Wright's attempt to disrupt one of Australia's founding stories, but criticised the book's tendency to "speculate and fulminate" without adequate historical evidence.^[10] Anne Beggs-Sunter, reviewing the book for the journal Labour History, wrote that the book was "based on exemplary research, and enriched by some little-known illustrations", but that it "caters to the popular rather than the academic market".^[11] Some reviewers criticised Wright's suggestion that her research was unique, pointing out that the role of women in the Ballarat goldfields had already been studied extensively by other historians.^[12][13]