by Bill Holloway
Following my last post The New Woman in Australia, I provide here an annotated list of our earliest women writers, initially writing just diaries and letters back home, then short stories for the local press, and increasingly novels, serialized and published, until, by the end of the nineteenth century they were the heart of a vibrant literary culture.
Note that although I say ‘1890’, the later ones wrote into the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Links in brackets are to reviews; the others to bios, articles, and in some cases, original text.
The first novel written by a woman in Australia was Castle Herbert (1830), a gothic tale, not set in Australia, which Mary Grimstone wrote while she was in Tasmania for a year or so. But most early novels were set here, and accurately reflected early, though mostly post-gold-rush, life, starting with: CH Spence, Clara Morison (1854), Louisa Atkinson, Gertrude the Emigrant (1857) and Caroline Leakey, The Broad Arrow (1859).
Ada Cambridge, Tasma, Rosa Praed, Catherine Martin, Mary Gaunt and a large number of others writing serials for the newspapers were another generation younger (though I count them all, here, as ‘Generation 1’), writing from the 1880s on, into the twentieth century.
Over the second half of the century, from Clara and Gertrude competently supporting themselves, to Tasma divorcing her husband and disparaging him in her fiction, to Martin’s Australian Girl who would much rather remain an “old maid”, to Praed gaily dispensing with unsatisfactory husbands we see England’s New Woman growing into a uniquely Australian ‘Independent Woman’.
It is worth noting here that Catherine Martin’s later novel, The Incredible Journey (1923), was the first to have an Aboriginal protagonist, and that by and large women writers were much more sympathetic to the displaced original inhabitants of this country than were the men.
What follows is a list of at least the better known early Australian women writers – and Elizabeth Lhuede in these pages comes up every month with more – with links, where I have them, to reviews. (In birth date order):
Margaret Catchpole (1762-1819) ADB
Letters (1801-1811) Online
Richard Cobbold, The History of Margaret Catchpole: A Suffolk Girl (1845) here
Elizabeth Macarthur (1766-1850) ADB
Letters (1789-1849) (Michelle Scott Tucker)
Hughes, J (ed), The Journal and Letters of Elizabeth Macarthur 1789-1798, Historic Houses Trust NSW, Sydney, 1984.
Macarthur Onslow, S, The Macarthurs of Camden, Rigby, Adelaide, 1973.
Michelle Scott Tucker, Elizabeth Macarthur: A Life at the Edge of the World, Text, Melbourne, 2018 (The Australian Legend)
Elizabeth Macarthur, Bill Holloway
Anne Drysdale (1792-1853) and Caroline Elizabeth Newcomb (1812-1874) ADB
Roberts, B (ed), Miss D & Miss N: an extraordinary partnership, Australian Scholarly Publishing with the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 2009. (Michelle Scott Tucker)
Mary Leman Grimstone (1796-1869) ADB
Louisa Egerton: or Castle Herbert (1830) (A Course of Steady Reading)
Woman’s Love (1832)
Charlotte Barton (1796-1867) ADB (mother of Louisa Atkinson)
A Mother’s Offering to Her Children (1841)
K Forsyth & B Murrell, Searching for Charlotte, 2020 (The Book Muse)
Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796-1880) ADB
Forgotten Writers 2, Eliza Hamilton Dunlop, Whispering Gums
Georgiana McCrae (1804-1890) ADB
Georgiana’s Journal (1934), William Brooks, Sydney, 1978 (The Resident Judge of Port Phillip)
Brenda Niall, Georgiana, Miegunyah Press, 1994
Georgiana Molloy (1805-1843) ADB, website
Diary here
Letters (1837-1843) here (Jessica White)
Bernice Barry, Georgiana Molloy: The Mind that Shines, Redgate, 2015 (Michelle Scott Tucker)
The Native Seeds of Augusta Jessica White
Anna Maria Bunn (1809-1889) Wiki
The Guardian: A Tale (by an Australian) (1838)
Louisa Meredith (1812-1895) ADB
My Home in Tasmania during a Residence of Nine Years (1852)
Vivienne Rae Ellis, Louisa Anne Meredith: A Tigress in Exile, Blubber Head Press, Tas., 1979
Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) Wiki
Force and Fraud: A Tale of the Bush (1865), Grattan Street Publishing, Melbourne, 2017 (The Australian Legend)
Annie Baxter (1816-1905) ADB
Journal of Annie Baxter Dawbin, Lucy Frost ed., UQP, Brisbane, 1998
Catherine Helen Spence (1825-1910) ADB, UniMelb, AWWC
Clara Morrison (1854), Seal Books, 1971 (Bill Holloway)
Mr Hogarth’s Will (1865), Penguin, 1988 (Book Around the Corner)
The Author’s Daughter (1867)
A Week in the Future (1889), Hale & Ironmonger, 1988 (The Australian Legend)
An Autobiography (1910) (Bill Holloway) (Book Around the Corner)
Susan Magarey, Unbridling the Tongues of Women (biography) (The Resident Judge of Port Phillip)
Susan Magarey ed. (with Barbara Wall, Mary Lyons, Maryan Beams), Ever Yours, C.H. Spence (autobiography, diary, letters) (The Resident Judge of Port Phillip) (ANZLitLovers)
Rachel Henning (1826-1914) ADB
Letters (1853-1882), Bulletin, 1951-2, Angus & Robertson, 1953, 1986.(Bill Holloway)
The Letters of Rachel Henning: Have we been conned? Illawarra Historical Soc.
Annabella Boswell (1826-1912) ADB
Recollections of Some Australian Blacks (1890)
Some Recollections of My Early Days (1908), repub. as Annabella Boswell’s Journal, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1965, 1981, 1993 (The Australian Legend)
Further Recollections of My Early Days in Australia (1911), repub. as Annabella Boswell’s Other Journal, Mulini Press, Canberra, 1992
Maud Jeanne Franc (Matilda Jane Evans) (1827-1886) ADB
Marian, or The Light of Some One’s Home (1859)
Barbara Wall, Our Own Matilda, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 1994
Australia’s Greatest Temperance Novelist, Nathan Hobby
Mary Braidwood Mowle (1827-1857) ADB
Diaries (Michelle Scott Tucker)
Patricia Clarke, A Colonial Woman: The Life and Times of Mary Braidwood Mowle 1827-1857 (Syd, 1986)
Caroline Leakey (1827-1881) ADB
The Broad Arrow (1859, 2nd ed. 1886) (Bill Holloway)
The Broad Arrow (revised 2019, J. Mead ed.)
Hobart Writers Festival 2019, Ian Terry
Ellen Clacy (1830-1901) Wiki
A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852–1853 (1853)
Lights and Shadows of Australian Life (1854), British Library, 2011
Mary Anne Broome (1831-1911) ADB
Letters to Guy (1885), OUP, Melbourne, 1963
Mary Helena Fortune (Waif Wander) (1833-1911) ADB
Bertha’s Legacy (1866)
Clyzia the Dwarf : A Romance (1866)
The Secrets of Balbrooke : A Tale (1866)
The Bushranger’s Autobiography (1872)
Dan Lyons’ Doom (1884)
Dora Carleton : A Tale of Australia (1886)
The Detective’s Album : Tales of the Australian Police (1871)
The Fortunes of Mary Fortune (1996) edited by Lucy Sussex
Three Murder Mysteries (2009)
Louisa Atkinson (1834-1872) ADB
Gertrude the Emigrant: A Tale of Colonial Life by an Australian Lady (1857), Canberra School of English & Australian Scholarly Editions Centre reprint, 1998 (Bill Holloway)
A Voice from the Country, Column in Sydney Morning Herald (1860-1870?) (Whispering Gums)
The Road to Louisa Atkinson’s Nature Notes, NLA, 2015, Penny Olsen
Louisa Atkinson and Indigenous Australians, Whispering Gums
Pioneer woman journalist Whispering Gums
Ada Cambridge (1844-1926) ADB, website
The Three Miss Kings (1883), Virago, Modern Classics #244 (The Australian Legend) (Book Around the Corner)
A Marked Man, Some Episodes in his Life (1891), Pandora, 1987 (Narelle Ontivero)
A Humble Enterprise (1896) (Book Around the Corner)
Thirty Years in Australia (1903) (Bill Holloway)
Sisters (1904), Penguin, 1989 (Brona’s Books) (The Australian Legend)
Poems, Australian Poetry Library here
Ada Cambridge: colonial writer and social critic, Morgan Burgess
Tasma (Jessie Couvreur) (1848-1894) ADB, UniMelb
Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill (1889), Pandora, 1987 (Whispering Gums)
A Sydney Sovereign, short stories, Imprint, 1993 (The Australian Legend)
“As Nature Bade Her”: Sensuality in Tasma’s Bush Stories Narelle Ontivero
Tasma (aka Jessie Couvreur) Whispering Gums
Tasma The Australian Legend
Patricia Clarke, Tasma the life of Jessie Couvreur, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994
Patricia Clarke, Tasma’s Diaries, Mulini Press, Canberra, 1996
Patricia Clarke, papers in the NLA (here)
Tasma as seen by the Tasmanian Government (here)
Obituary, Hobart Mercury (here)
Catherine Martin (1848-1937) ADB
An Australian Girl (1894), Pandora, 1987 (The Australian Legend)
The Incredible Journey (1923), Pandora, 1987
Poems, Australian Poetry Library here
Rosa Praed (1851-1935) ADB, UniMelb
The Bond of Wedlock (1887), Pandora, 1987 (The Australian Legend)
The Soul of Countess Adrian (1888) (Jessica White)
The Romance of a Station (1889)
Outlaw and Lawmaker (1893), Pandora, 1987
Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land (1915), Pandora, 1987 (The Australian Legend)
Sister Sorrow (1916) (Jessica White)
Chris Tiffin, Rosa Praed, Victorian Fiction Research Guides here
Patricia Clarke, A Paradox of Exile: Rosa Praed’s Lifelines to her Australian Past. In Haebich and Offord (eds), Landscapes of Exile: Once Perilous, Now Safe here
Race and Romance in the Australian Novels of Rosa Praed, Len Platt
Stargazing with Rosa Praed, Jessica White, Sydney Review of Books
Great roundup of these remarkable women. I was pleased to see Margaret Catchpole on the list. I grew up in the Hawkesbury Valley, an historic region of early colonial settlement where Margaret lived after she was sent to NSW on a convict transport.
Windsor Hospital’s maternity ward is named for her, because she became (informally) the district midwife and nurse, delivering many babies around the far flung farm cottages and settlements in the area.
Her convict story is incredible too. Like the more well known Mary Reibey, she stole a horse while dressed as a young man, then scaled the wall of her first prison to escape, but was rearrested then sentenced to transportation.
There’s a lot more I could say about Margaret including how she became literate in the first place and who she wrote her letters to from the colony, so if readers would like to learn more of her remarkable life I’d recommend chasing up the biography of Margaret.
Thank you Denise, for that extra information. I’m certainly inspired to read more. Is there a modern biography?
Great post Bill as Denise said, and a good resource for researchers who come our way. Interesting point about colonial women writers being, generally, more understanding about the implications of our presence for First Nations people.
I know it’s a generalisation but you see it over and over, women describing Aboriginal life and people, men describing them as a malevolent enemy.
This is one of those posts which, at first glance, appears to be little more than a simple list, but it’s evident just how much thought and research and attention-to-detail is required, just to assemble and organize and structure, let alone locate all the links to external sites and reviews and musings (some are yours, but many are not) and create a throughline. I’m sure there are many students, and AusLit enthusiasts who’ll find much food for thought (and titles for TBRs) here.
We here at AWWC write every week about early Australian women. A list makes it easier to get an overview. I hope one or two of these authors make it on to your TBR.