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===Early life=== |
===Early life=== |
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Catherine Helen Spence was born in Scotland near [[Melrose, Scotland|Melrose]] on 31 October 1825.{{sfn|Eade|1976}} Her father was a lawyer, while her mother was descended from a family of tenant farmers. Her parents were both members of the [[Church of Scotland]] and held [[reformist]] political views. Catherine and her seven siblings were all well-educated; Catherine and one of her younger sisters attended a local day school named St Mary’s Convent. In 1839, her father lost a substantial sum of money after investing in a speculative wheat venture, ruining Catherine’s plans of pursuing further education in Edinburgh. The venture also destroyed her father’s reputation, which was essential to his work as a lawyer, forcing them to leave Scotland and move to [[South Australia]]. Catherine and four of her siblings left with their mother for South Australia, where her father had purchased 80 acres of land, in July 1839.{{sfn|Magarey|2010|pp=23–27}} Spence arrived in the colony of South Australia at the age of 14 in November 1839. At the time the colony was just three years old.{{sfn|Magarey|2010|p=5}} |
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===Later life and death=== |
===Later life and death=== |
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At a celebration of Spence’s 80th birthday, the Chief Justice of South Australia labelled her “the most distinguished woman they had had in Australia”.{{sfn|Magarey|2010|p=5}} |
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==Notable works== |
==Notable works== |
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==Legacy== |
==Legacy== |
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*[[Catherine Helen Spence Memorial Scholarship]] established in 1911.{{sfn|Magarey|2010|p=7}} |
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*[[Division of Spence]] named after her.{{sfn|Magarey|2010|p=7}} |
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==Selected works== |
==Selected works== |
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Latest revision as of 06:50, 5 October 2025
Australian author, teacher, journalist, politician and suffragist
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Catherine Helen Spence |
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Portrait of Catherine Helen Spence in the 1890s |
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| Born | 31 October 1825 |
| Died | 3 April 1910 (aged 84) |
| Resting place | St. Jude’s Cemetery, Brighton |
| Occupation | Author, teacher, journalist and politician |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Notable works | Clara Morison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever |
Catherine Helen Spence (31 October 1825 – 3 April 1910)
Catherine Helen Spence was born in Scotland near Melrose on 31 October 1825. Her father was a lawyer, while her mother was descended from a family of tenant farmers. Her parents were both members of the Church of Scotland and held reformist political views. Catherine and her seven siblings were all well-educated; Catherine and one of her younger sisters attended a local day school named St Mary’s Convent. In 1839, her father lost a substantial sum of money after investing in a speculative wheat venture, ruining Catherine’s plans of pursuing further education in Edinburgh. The venture also destroyed her father’s reputation, which was essential to his work as a lawyer, forcing them to leave Scotland and move to South Australia. Catherine and four of her siblings left with their mother for South Australia, where her father had purchased 80 acres of land, in July 1839. Spence arrived in the colony of South Australia at the age of 14 in November 1839. At the time the colony was just three years old.
Later life and death
[edit]
At a celebration of Spence’s 80th birthday, the Chief Justice of South Australia labelled her “the most distinguished woman they had had in Australia”.
Journalism and non-fiction
[edit]
Novels
- Clara Morison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever (1854)
- Tender and True: A Colonial Tale (1856)
- Mr Hogarth’s Will (1865) originally serialised as Uphill Work in the (Adelaide) Weekly Mail
- The Author’s Daughter (1868) originally serialised as Hugh Lindsay’s Guest in the (Adelaide) Observer
- Gathered In serialised in Observer and Journal and Queenslander, possibly never published in book form
- An Agnostic’s Progress from the Known to the Unknown (1884)
- A Week in the Future (1889)
- Handfasted (1984) Penguin Originals ISBNÂ 0-14-007505-4
Non fiction
- A Plea for Pure Democracy (1861) pamphlet praised by John Stuart Mill and Thomas Hare
- The laws we live under (1880) for South Australian Education Department
- Effective Voting (1893) published in Adelaid
- State children in Australia: A history of boarding out and its developments (1909) principally dealing with the work of Emily Clark This book was used by the British Home Secretary when at the end of her reign Queen Victoria asked him to formulate Child Laws in Britain that up until that time were non-existent. He wrote and thanked her for her work.
- Catherine Helen Spence: An autobiography (1910) (unfinished, but completed posthumously by Spence’s friend Jeanne Young, working from diaries.)
- Magarey, Susan (2010) [1985]. Unbridling the tongues of women: a biography of Catherine Helen Spence. Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. ISBNÂ 978-0-9806723-1-2.
- Eade, Susan (1976). “Catherine Helen Spence (1825–1910)”. In Nairn, Bede (ed.). Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 6. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. ISBN 0-522-84108-2. Retrieved 5 October 2025.
- Magarey, Susan (2009). “The private life of Catherine Helen Spence, 1825-1910”. In Davison, Graeme (ed.). Body and Mind: Historical Essays in Honour of F. B. Smith. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. pp. 195–215. ISBN 9780522857177.
- Walker, R. B. (1969). “Catherine Helen Spence and South Australian politics”. Australian Journal of Politics & History. 15 (1): 35–46. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8497.1969.tb00938.x. ISSN 0004-9522.
- Shaikh, Fariha (2022). “Catherine Helen Spence’s Autobiography: literary culture and associational life in nineteenth-century South Australia”. Journal of Victorian Culture. 27 (4): 643–655. doi:10.1093/jvcult/vcac037. ISSN 1355-5502.
- Walston Joseph, Terra (2011). “A ‘curious political and social experiment’: a settler utopia, feminism and a greater Britain in Catherine Helen Spence’s Handfasted“. In Wagner, Tamara (ed.). Victorian Settler Narratives: Emigrants, Cosmopolitans and Returnees in Nineteenth-Century Literature. London: Routledge. pp. 193–206. doi:10.4324/9781315655796. ISBN 9781315655796.
- Sharp, Sarah (2019). “‘Your vocation is marriage’: systematic colonisation, the marriage plot and finding home in Catherine Helen Spence’s Clara Morison (1854)”. Scottish Literary Review. 11 (1): 27–45. hdl:2164/15330. ISSN 2050-6678.
- Uhr, John (2020). “Catherine Spence’s Clara Morison“. Novel Politics: Studies in Australian Political Fiction. Carlton: Melbourne University Press. pp. 41–62. ISBN 9780522875973.
- Bowman Albinski, Nan (1989). “Handfasted: an Australian feminist’s American utopia”. Journal of Popular Culture. 23 (2): 15–31. ISSN 0022-3840. ProQuest 1297353299.
- Magarey, Susan (1989). “Feminist visions across the Pacific: Catherine Helen Spence’s Handfasted“. Antipodes. 3 (1): 31–33. ISSN 0893-5580.
- Partington, Geoffrey (1990). “Catherine Helen Spence and the wonderful 19th century”. Quadrant. Vol. 34, no. 1–2. pp. 63–67. ISSN 0033-5002.
- Hammond, Lee (1995). “Catherine Helen Spence’s Clara Morison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever“. Cabbages and Kings. 23: 3–9. ISSN 0310-1584.
- Jones, Helen (1983). “Lucy Spence Morice and Catherine Helen Spence: partners in South Australian social reform”. Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia. 11: 48–64. ISSN 0312-9640.
- Hancock, Janette (2003). “Me, myself and others’: a new look at Catherine Helen Spence”. Lilith: A Feminist History Journal. 12: 35–49. ISSN 2652-8436.
- Magarey, Susan (2013). “Catherine Helen Spence’s journalism: ‘Some social aspects of South Australian life’, by a colonist of 1839”. Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia. 41: 22–29. ISSN 0312-9640.
