Catherine Helen Spence

Catherine Helen Spence
photograph
PIC P2234
National Library of Australia
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA'S
FEDERATION GATEWAY


SPENCE, CATHERINE HELEN (1825-1910)

Suffragist, electoral reformer, prohibitionist, feminist and novelist, born in Melrose, Scotland on 31 October 1825. She migrated to South Australia with her family, arriving there on the Palmyra on her 14th birthday in 1839.

She published Clara Morison (1854), Tender and True (1856), Mr. Hogarth's Will (1865), and The Author's Daughter (1868). Her A Plea for Pure Democracy (1861) supported Thomas Hare's scheme for proportional parliamentary representation for both minorities and majorities, and she also advocated women's suffrage.

She wrote regularly for the South Australian Register, contributed to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Review and the Victorian Review. She also became the first woman member of the board of advice under the Department of Education, and wrote a handbook of civics, The Laws We Live Under (1880).

Miss Spence stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Federal Convention in 1897, became president of the South Australian Co-operative Clothing Company in 1901, and published State Children in Australia, a History of Boarding-out and its Developments (1907).

She died on 3 April 1910, leaving an unfinished autobiography which was finished by Jeanne F. Young and appeared serially in the South Australian Register.

Public subscription established a travelling scholarship in her honour at the University of Adelaide.

Books of interest

Spence, Catherine Helen. (1910). An autobiography. Adelaide, [S. Aust.]: W.K. Thomas.

Magarey, Susan. (c1985). Unbridling the tongues of women: a biography of Catherine Helen Spence. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger.

Catherine Helen Spence. (c1994) Tenacious of the past : the recollections of Helen Brodie; edited by Judy King and Graham Tullock. . Adelaide, S. Aust.: Centre for Research in the New Literatures in English; Libraries Board of South Australia.

Several microfilmed collections of her papers from the Mitchell Library in the NLA Newspaper/Microform area (mfm G7316, 8136-8139) and over 30 of her published works in the general collection.

 

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