An Autobiography

Catherine Helen Spence

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Description

Catherine Helen Spence's Autobiography tells the life of South Australia's great reformer, from a childhood in Melrose, Scotland, to the eightieth milestone. Her family emigrated when she was fourteen, and she began in Adelaide at seventeen, teaching and writing. The chapters read like a history of the colony's conscience: wards of the state, education, journalism and politics. In London she met John Stuart Mill and George Eliot, and came home with her reformer's charter confirmed.

Her great cause fills the later chapters: effective voting, meaning proportional representation, which she preached for fifty years and saw adopted for Tasmania and South Australian councils. She worked for state children and women's suffrage, and in 1897 became the first woman in Australia to stand as a political candidate. Readers get a reformer's life written as an account of work, plain, proud, and stuffed with the names of everyone who helped.

Catalog record

CREATORCatherine Helen Spence
COLLECTIONBOOKS
FORMATTXT
FILE SIZE399 KB
LICENSEPUBLIC_DOMAIN
RIGHTSPUBLIC DOMAIN
SOURCEProject Gutenberg

Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4220

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