Summary
Colonial Australian women writers often made their living through a combination of journalism and popular romance fiction, which they published in the many local journals and periodicals that were available to them, including the Australian Journal, the Australasian, the Leader and the Australian Town and Country Journal. For writers such as Ada Cambridge and 'Tasma' (Jessie Couvreur), serialisation in magazines and journals was often followed by overseas publication: Couvreur's novel The Pipers of Piper's Hill (1888) was published simultaneously in London, New York and Leipzig as Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill after first appearing in the Australasian. Other colonial Australian women writers to have developed international reputations producing romance fiction include Catherine Martin, Rosa Praed, Alice Grant Rosman and Louise Mack, but also significant to the genre are the many anonymous and one-time authors who invested in it. Colonial Australian romance fiction provided a crucial site for establishing the model of womanhood that best promised to express the needs and aspirations of an emergent nation, with its heroines negotiating marriage and relationships, homemaking, career destinations and livelihoods. Frequently concerned with mapping the transition from innocence to experience, colonial Australian romance fiction embraced various modes of colonial femininity from the 'slim and graceful' Australian girl to the more worldly or knowing mature woman.