Louisa Atkinson

Early life

Louisa Atkinson was born Caroline Louisa Waring Atkinson on 25 February 1834 near Berrima, New South Wales, at her family's property Oldbury. Her parents were the successful farmer and author James Atkinson and his wife Charlotte (née Waring), the author of Australia's first children's novel.^[1][2] Her father died less than two months after her birth. Her mother married the property's superintendent George Bruce Barton soon after. Discovering that Barton was a violent alcoholic, Louisa's mother eventually fled with her children to a cattle station in Budgong. With no income, she moved to Sydney seven months later and petitioned the court for custody of her children and a portion of her deceased husband's estate. The legal case eventually stretched over six years and consumed much of the family's wealth, before Charlotte was eventually awarded custody of her children.^[3][1]

Louisa did not receive a formal schooling and was educated largely by her mother.^[1] While her elder siblings were sent to private schools in Sydney after her mother was awarded custody, Louisa was in poor health and continued to be educated at home. She suffered from tuberculosis throughout her life, which eventually developed into heart issues. The family returned to Oldbury when Louisa was about twelve and remained there throughout Louisa's teenage years.^[4] She developed an interest in geology, botany, and zoology, and spent her days studying native plants and animals.^[1][4]

Writer and naturalist

By the age of nineteen, Louisa had begun to regularly contribute illustrated articles on natural history to the Illustrated Sydney News. She also wrote short stories and a brief series of articles about Aboriginal Australians titled "The Native Arts".^[4][5] She used her writing as a source of income; while she began to earn a small income from her father's estate in 1855, there was barely enough remaining to support the family's three daughters. The Illustrated Sydney News ceased publication after less than two years in 1855, after which she sporadically wrote for The Australian Band of Hope Journal.^[6]

Atkinson published her first novel, Gertrude the Emigrant, under the pseudonym "An Australian Lady" in 1857. The novel was published in a series of 24 eight-page instalments, each of which were sold for three pence. It was positively reviewed, with The Sydney Morning Herald writing that Atkinson had skilfully depicted the "ordinary incidents of everyday occurrence in town and country". Gertrude the Emigrant was published as an illustrated book later that year by Jacob Richard Clarke.^[6]

Around 1858 Atkinson and her mother moved to Kurrajong Heights. Atkinson published her next novel, Cowanda, the Veteran's Grant: An Australian Story, the following year. The novel, which was set on a property near their new home, was published by Clarke and featured a cover illustrated by the artist S. T. Gill.^[7][8] In Kurrajong Heights Atkinson began to spend more time collecting and studying native animals and plants, and would ride her horse across the district to collect specimens.^[9] In 1860 she became a regular contributor to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sydney Mail, writing a popular column titled "A Voice from the Country".^[6] She became a well-known amateur naturalist among experts amidst an influx of interest in the newly discovered Australian natural landscape from scientists both in Australia and overseas.^[9]

In the early 1860s Atkinson met the fellow plant collector William Woolls, who introduced her to scientists including Ferdinand von Mueller, William Sharp Macleay, and William Branwhite Clarke. She developed a regular correspondence and friendship with them.^[9] She published a series of articles on the culinary uses of native plants and the ferns of her district in the Horticultural Magazine in 1864. During her time in Kurrajong Heights, Atkinson also became active in the community, teaching a home Sunday school and volunteering around the district.^[10]

In 1861 Atkinson published a serial novel, Debatable Ground, in weekly instalments in the Sydney Mail over the course of five months.^[10] Her next novel, Myra, appeared weekly in the same publication for two months in early 1864. The novel features characters that the scholar Patricia Clarke describes as an implied lesbian couple: the protagonist's guardians are two women, one of whom is a masculine figure who manages the farm, while the other manages the household.^[11]

Marriage and death

By the mid-1860s, Atkinson's tuberculosis had returned, leading to a sustained decline in her health. She also began caring for her ageing mother after she suffered injuries in a fall, leading the pace of her writing to decline substantially.^[11] Louisa and her mother Charlotte returned to Oldbury to live with her brother.^[11][1] After her mother died in 1869, Atkinson married the explorer James Calvert. They briefly lived on his property, Cavan, and then returned to a cottage at Oldbury.^[1][12] In 1871 Atkinson published her next novel, Tom Hellicar's Children, loosely based on her mother's own battle for custody of her children.^[13] She also began publishing a new series of articles about plants and natural history in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sydney Mail.^[12] Atkinson wrote her last article, an entry in a new series titled "My First Bush Home, by a Country Housemother", for the Sydney Mail on 10 February 1872.^[14]

On 10 April 1872 Atkinson gave birth to a daughter named Louise Snowden Annie Calvert. She died suddenly from a heart attack a few weeks later on 28 April, reportedly after seeing her husband's horse arrive home without its rider. Calvert, who had not been injured in the fall, arrived home soon after to find Louisa dead.^[1][14] Her final novel, Tressa's Resolve, was published posthumously in the Sydney Mail in 1872. It drew on her husband's time exploring remote areas of Queensland during an expedition with Ludwig Leichhardt in the 1840s.^[15]