
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. |