Her novels, nevertheless--including those published in her lifetime only in serial form in newspapers--are important in presenting, in an non-self-conscious way, ordinary life in colonial Australia. Her characters and the situations they encounter were easily recognized by contemporary readers, and her stories have the added significance of casting women in major roles performing responsible work.
Caroline Louisa Waring Atkinson (always known as Louisa) was born on 25 February 1834 at her father's estate, Oldbury, at Sutton Forest in the Berrima district of the southern tablelands of New South Wales, ninety miles south-southwest of Sydney. Her birth occurred less than fifty years after the arrival in 1788 of the First Fleet, carrying the first group of convicts who began the colonization of New South Wales under the British Crown. When Louisa was born, the European population of New South Wales was little more than 60,000 people, and she was one of only about 12,000 people of European descent who were Australian-born. New South Wales was still a frontier society. Convicts transported from England, Ireland, and Scotland provided most of the labor on farms and in the building of Sydney, the only town of any size.
This is a free page. This page contains 190 words. This
biography contains 10,383 words (approx. 35 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Louisa Atkinson Access Pass.
