Catherine helen spence biography examples
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Catherine Helen Spence was born on 31 October near Melrose, Scotland and migrated with her family to South Australia in Catherine worked as a governess hoping to fulfil her childhood ambition to be a teacher and a great writer.
She wrote the first novel about Australia by a woman, Clara Morison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever which was published anonymously in London in Other books followed which bore her name as the author until she stopped writing fiction in She was more interested in writing as a literary critic and social commentator with articles published regularly in South Australian newspapers and magazines.
In , Catherine was involved in the formation of the Boarding-Out Society to find homes for orphaned, destitute and reformed delinquent children. She worked as a visitor who checked on their progress. She supported the foundation of kindergartens and a government secondary school for girls. She wrote a book The Laws We Live Under () which became the fir
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About Catherine Helen Spence
This chronological bibliography of over 2, items was compiled by South Australian historian and writer Dr Barbara Wall, and provides comprehensive access to the vast published output of Spence between and , and beyond this date, to the tributes and biographical material about Spence which extend into the s.
Catherine Helen Spence was Australia's first truly professional woman journalist and first female political candidate, as well as a fearless social and political reformer in South Australia. Her influence on suffrage, culminating in South Australia being the first state in the world to give women the right to stand for Parliament, extended beyond Australia.
As an indication of her continuing influence, Adelaide's daily newspaper The Advertiser on 20 December included Catherine Helen Spence in its list of the ten greatest South Australians of the 20th century, and this despite the fact that most of her work was done in the 19th century
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Melrose, Birthplace of Catherine Helen Spence |
Catherine Helen Spence lived from 31 October to 3 April Born in Melrose, she became a leading Australian author, teacher, reporter, and campaigner for women's rights. The wider picture in Scotland at the time is set out in our Historical Timeline.
Catherine was born the fifth child in a family of eight in By the age of 13 she had expressed a desire to become a teacher and writer, but the following year, in , her father was financially ruined and the education of all the children came to an immediate halt. The family decided to man a fresh start, and in November they arrived to begin a new life in the colony of South Australia.
Their arrival coincided with a long drought, and after seven very difficult months ansträngande to grow wheat on an 80 acre farm, Catherine's father became the Town Clerk of Adelaide. Although her father died in , Catherine, her mother and one o