South Australian suffragist, author, journalist and lecturer, Catherine Helen Spence, pictured standing beside her mother, Helen Brodie Spence. Catherine Helen Spence was born in Melrose, Scotland on 31 October 1825. She arrived in South Australia with her mother in November 1839 aboard the Palmyra.

In 1905 on her 80th birthday, South Australian Chief Justice, Sir Samuel Way, declared she was 'The most distinguished woman they had had in Australia .... She was a novelist, a critic, an accomplished journalist, a preacher, a lecturer, a philanthropist, and a social and moral reformer'. Catherine Helen Spence died on 3 April 1910.

Cooper, J .Catherine Spence, 1972, Oxford University Press, Melbourne

Jones, Helen, In her own name. A history of women in South Australia from 1836, 1994. Wakefield Press, Adelaide

Magarey, S (ed) 2005, Ever yours, C.H. Spence : Catherine Helen Spence's An autobiography (1825-1910), diary (1894) and some correspondence (1894-1910), Kent Town, S. Aust.: Wakefield Press

Magarey, Susan, Unbridling the tongues of women, 1985 Hale and Iremonger. Sydney

Young, Jeanne F, Catherine Helen Spence, a study and an appreciation, 1937, Lothian Publishing Co. Pty. Ltd. Melbourne and Sydney

Catherine Helen Spence : A bibliography

SA Memory, More information on Spence, Archival, readings etc.

SA Memory, Women's movement, Women's suffrage