Louisa Lawson (1848–1920)

Louisa Albury was born into a large Austalian family and left school at age 13. In 1866, she married an immigrant Norwegian sailor and goldminer, Niels Hertzberg Larsen, who anglicized his name to Peter Lawson, and the couple had four children, including the future poet and man of letters Henry Lawson. Louisa Lawson's husband was often away at gold mines and she lived with her children under harsh conditions in the rural bush; eventually, she took them to Sydney, where she provided for them by working as a seamstress and running boarding houses. She become involved with social reform and radical politics, and with her savings, in 1887 bought The Republican newspaper. She founded the journal Dawn, which she edited for almost 20 years, and also founded the Dawn Club in 1889 -- it became a focal point for the campaign for women's suffrage. Louisa Lawson retired in 1905 but continued to write for magazines and published The Lonely Crossing and Other Poems, a collection of 53 poems. She died after suffering serious long-term mental and physical injuries in a train carriage accident.