Catherine Helen Spence

Catherine Helen Spence (1825-1910), Australian feminist, social reformer, and writer. Born in Scotland, Spence migrated to the newly formed colony of South Australia with her family in 1839. She was a governess for a time and then turned to writing to earn a living. Her first novel, Clara Morrison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever (1854), is believed to be the first novel written about Australia by a woman. Her other novels include Tender and True: A Colonial Tale (1856), Mr. Hogarth's Will (1865), The Author's Daughter (1868), Gathered-In (serialized in the Adelaide Observer, 1881-1882), and Handfasted: A Romance (published posthumously, 1984). Spence also wrote for newspapers and journals as a literary critic and social commentator, becoming a regular paid contributor to the South Australian Register in 1872.

Spence also pursued an active career as a reformer. She campaigned for various causes, including improving the welfare of children and the education of girls, reforming divorce laws, giving the vote to women, and electing members of the legislature by proportional representation. She saw her campaign for proportional representation as the most important of her career and as fundamental to the creation of a democratic society. In 1897 Spence became Australia's first female political candidate when she ran, unsuccessfully, for the Federal Convention, which met to decide whether to join Australia's colonies into a single commonwealth.

Throughout her life, Spence maintained an international outlook. In 1865 she visited Scotland and England, where she made the acquaintance of the British philosopher-economist John Stuart Mill. In 1893 she traveled to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition; while in Chicago she addressed a number of conferences on social reform. A Unitarian, she also preached at churches in the United States, as she had in Australia. In 1910 she published her last book, Catherine Helen Spence: An Autobiography.