A Colonial Woman: The Life and Times of Mary Braidwood Mowle, 1827-1857 by Patricia Clarke

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Light foxing to endpages and foredges. Previous owner has inscribed half-title page.

Mary Braidwood Mowle (need Wilson) arrived in Sydney aged nine aboard a convict ship on which her father was Surgeon Superintendent. As she grew up, she was accepted into the best circles of colonial society and was described as 'one of the nicest girls in Sydney'.

Her fortunes changed. Orphaned and penniless at 16, she married at 17, went to live in a bark hut in the Australian Alps, and later moved to a farm on the Limestone Plains in what is now Canberra.

Here, she recorded in her diary the life of a woman who lived through drought and economic depression. Her accounts offer a rich, captivating insight into mid-19th-century colonial life. (book flap)