54. Spence, Catherine Helen, 1825-1910.
Clara Morison : a tale of South Australia during the gold fever. (London : John W. Parker & Son, 1854) 2 vols. bound in 1.
Catherine Helen Spence is one of the best of the nineteenth century Australian authors. She came to South Australia in 1839 and worked as a governess. These experiences inform her novel, Clara Morison, and her style is in the Jane Austen, George Eliot mould. The novel was published in London, as was the case with most Australian literature. The book is set in colonial South Australia, but the publisher chose to include incongruous and misleading frontispieces, apparently from quite another work. The second of these is particularly odd. It seems to be a Spanish scene, with a women staring dreamily from a balcony, a toucan perched at her side.
