I don’t imagine Patricia Clarke was in the audience – indeed, only one of the five women I discussed is included in her book. But Pen Portraits is exactly the sort of project I had hoped to inspire. It aims

To celebrate the lives and achievements of women writers and journalists in nineteenth century Australia. Many of the pioneers in the field – creative writers; writers of serials (the nineteenth century equivalent of today’s radio and television soap operas); and journalists, are included but I make no claim to have written about all women writers or journalists.

She goes on to note the particular difficulties in tracking down journalists. Most contributions to nineteenth century newspapers and magazines were unsigned or written under a pseudonym, so it is often impossible to tell from the item itself whether its writer was a man or a woman. As well, most women were employed only as casual contributors and few records of newspaper staff survive. Inevitably, there is something of a bias towards papers for which some records do exist, particularly the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Argus and Age and the West Australian.

In a rare moment of self-congratulation, Patricia Clarke notes that ‘tracing these women has been a considerable exercise in detection.’ She modestly does not indicate how many frustrating hours must have been spent following leads which went nowhere, poring over dusty volumes or, increasingly these days, straining eyes and back at the microfilm reader.

Fittingly, the chapters dealing with women journalists are the real strength of this book, throwing up dozens of fascinating and until now largely unknown characters. One of the highlights for me was Chapter 5, ‘Eccentric Entrepreneurs’, dealing with three women who were the first to publish magazines in Australia, Cora Anna Weekes of the Spectator and Caroline Dexter arid Harriet dishy of the Interpreter. I knew of the existence of these women and their magazines but knew little else about them. Was Cora Anna Weekes really a con-artist, who set up papers and magazines in Australia and the USA only in order to decamp with the subscriptions she charmed out of gullible businessmen and politicians? Patricia Clarke leaves the question open. If the claims were true, and not just rumours spread by proprietors of rival journals, one would still have to allow that Cora Anna was a clever woman as well as a forceful writer. As Patricia Clarke notes, ‘Her publication, the Spectator, begun in Sydney in 1858, was surprisingly professional.’ Cora Anna Weekes was also one of the first women to lecture publicly in Australia, speaking on ‘Female Heroism in the Nineteenth Century’ at the Sydney School of Arts in December 1858.

Firsts were also the order of the day in the careers of Caroline Dexter and Harriet Clisby, even if the Interpreter was not, as previously claimed, the first Australian magazine to be owned and edited by women. Caroline Dexter was responsible for the ‘First Australian Ladies’ Almanack published in the Colonies’: the Ladies Almanack 1858. The Southern Cross or Australian Album and New Year’s Gift. It included such choice gems of wisdom as ‘To ensure your husband’s affections, look after his shirt-buttons.’ Only a few months later, however, Caroline was replying to her husband’s request that she join him in Sydney:

Do you look on me as a piece of furniture or a purchased slave? ... When I leave Melbourne I shall leave it of my own free and independent will, without persuasion, without force, and as I have left all other places behind me creditably and honourably.

One of the ways by which Caroline Dexter supported herself in Melbourne was by opening a Mesmeric Institution on the comer of Collins and Russell Streets, where she featured as ‘Madame Carole, Medical Mesmerist and Clairvoyante’. This interest in alternative medicine particularly for women’s health problems, was, Patricia Clarke suggests what brought her into contact with Harriet Clisby. Clisby was later to travel to New York, to train at the Medical College and Hospital for Women, the first in the world to admit women as medical students.

Harriet Clisby’s choice of a medical career had been inspired by Elizabeth Blackwell, the world’s first qualified woman doctor. Less well-known, but equally remarkable in her own sphere, was Elizabeth’s sister Anna. Anna Blackwell, as Patricia Clarke reveals in Chapter 7, ‘Early Journalists and Country Editors’, was foreign correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald for thirty years. In this same chapter we learn of the journalistic careers of Jane Fischer, who wrote music and drama criticism for the Sydney Morning Herald from 1879 until her death in 1896; Marion Leathern who ran the Molong Express for nearly forty years; Annie Massy of the Bowen Advocate, and many others.

With the rise of specialised women’s magazines and the introduction of women’s pages into most major newspapers and magazines towards the end of the century, there were more openings for women journalists. Yet, as Patricia Clarke regretfully observes, there was much greater restriction on what they could write about. Unlike the pioneers mentioned above, and others such as Catherine Spence and Emily Manning, the women journalists discussed in the final chapters of Pen Portraits were largely confined to the women’s pages, to writing about the latest fashions and who wore what to the Governor’s Ball. There were exceptions, particularly those provided by Louisa Lawson’s Dawn and Maybanke Susannah Wolstenholme’s much less known Woman’s Voice. Wolstenholme’s journal lasted only seventeen months as against the Dawn’s seventeen years, an amazing tribute to Lawson’s energy and talent. It is hardly surprising that, too ill to carry on, she preferred to close rather than see the Dawn decline under another editor.

Given Patricia Clarke’s particular interest in journalism, it was rather puzzling to find her, like most previous literary historians and bibliographers, confining her attention to women poets and novelists who had had books published. Since publishing was a very costly business in nineteenth century Australia, and books were usually, produced at the author’s expense, the work of many prolific women writers appeared only in newspapers and magazines. One looks in vain in Pen Portraits for such early poets as Eliza Dunlop; important enough to warrant an ADB entry, and Mary Bailey of Hobart, discussed in E. Morris Miller’s Pressmen and Governors, a work listed in Patricia Clarke’s bibliography. Since there are a number of references in Pen Portraits to that most popular and successful of nineteenth century Australian magazines, the Australian Journal, it is also a surprise to find no mention of most of its women contributors, particularly the amazing Mary Helena Fortune who as ‘Waif Wander’ and ‘W.W.’ was one of the most productive nineteenth century Australian writers. She was a regular contributor to the Australian Journal for over fifty years, publishing hundreds of detective stories, five serialised novels, and numerous other articles, poems and stories. She and other Australian journal serial writers such as Mrs Arthur Davitt were more truly the forerunners of the modem soap opera than most of the novelists discussed in Pen Portraits.

Of course, Patricia Clarke made no claim to inclusiveness and the four women mentioned above (the other four discussed in my 1978 talk) have mostly now received some attention elsewhere. There is still a great deal of research to be done: many of the women sketched in Pen Portraits deserve full-scale biographies. Patricia Clarke has provided many valuable leads to be followed up, though I doubt that future workers will be able to discover many more pictures. The plentiful illustrations are another striking feature of this book. I was particularly taken with the two contrasting portraits of Barbara Baynton. It’s easy to see why she made so many advantageous magazines; and perhaps also why her first husband ran off with a servant.