Anne Bonny is recorded that Bonny had red hair and was considered a "good catch", but may have had a fiery temper; at age 13, she supposedly stabbed a servant girl with a knife. She married a poor sailor and small-time pirate named James Bonny. James hoped to win possession of his father-in-law's estate, but Bonny was disowned by her father. Bonny's father did not approve of James Bonny as a husband for his daughter and he kicked Anne out of their house. There is a story that Bonny set fire to her father's plantation in retaliation; but no evidence exists in
Ern Malley for the cover. The "Autumn 1944" edition of "Angry Penguins" appeared in June 1944 owing to wartime printing delays. Harris eagerly promoted it around the small world of Australian writers and critics. The reaction was not what he had hoped or expected. An article appeared in the University of Adelaide student newspaper ridiculing the Malley poems and suggesting that Harris had written them himself in some elaborate hoax. On 17 June, the Adelaide "Daily Mail" raised the possibility that Harris was the hoaxed rather than the hoaxer. Alarmed, Harris hired a private detective to establish whether Ern and Ethel Malley