An Autobiography

Recovering from measles, young Catherine Helen Spence is wrapped in a shawl and carried to hear a reformer mock the Tories: “conserves were pickles.” The crowd roars—and she remembers.

Writing at eighty-four, Spence begins in Melrose, Scotland, where the songs and legends of the Border shaped a happy childhood beneath the Eildon Hills. Her parents’ ideals, an inspired schoolteacher, and even a village square filled with public debate helped form a mind that would question the customs around her. But in 1839, when Catherine is thirteen, her family’s anxieties come to a head and they leave Scotland for a new life in South Australia. What will the child who listened to that speech make of the world waiting across the sea?

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