The book describes the role of women in the Eureka Stockade, an 1854 revolt in Ballarat against the British administration during the Victorian gold rush.

[2][3] In 2018, La Trobe University invested $200,000 in a proposed TV series based on The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka.

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".

[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".

[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.