Australian Fiction

Spence at last

February 2006, no. 278

Ever Yours, C.H. Spence: Catherine Helen Spence’s an autobiography (1825–1910), diary (1894) and some correspondence (1894–1910) edited by Susan Magarey

Wakefield, $39.95 hb, 392 pp, 1862546568

Australian Fiction

Spence at last

by Elizabeth Webby •

February 2006, no. 278

As Nicholas Jose observed in the November 2005 issue of ABR, the face of South Australian novelist Catherine Spence, currently featured on our $5 note, circulates much more widely than any of her books. Like those of several other nineteenth-century Australian women writers, Spence’s novels were revived in the 1980s but are now once again out of print. So this new edition of her autobiography, extensively annotated and accompanied by letters and a diary never before published, is especially welcome.

Elizabeth Webby

Elizabeth Webby AM FAHA, was Professor of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney from 1990 until her retirement in March 2007. Her publications include Early Australian Poetry (1982), Colonial Voices (1989), Modern Australian Plays (1990), The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (2000) and, as joint editor, Happy Endings (1987), Goodbye to Romance (1989), The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads (1993), Australian Feminism: A Companion (1998), and the Academy Edition of Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms (2006). She was a contributing editor, responsible for the 19^thcentury material, for the PEN Macquarie Anthology of Australian Literature (2009).