Charlotte Barton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charlotte Barton (1797-1862) was the author of Australia's earliest known children's book.
The first children's book to be written and published in Australia was A Mother's Offering to her Children: By a Lady, Long Resident in New South Wales. Sydney: Gazette Office , 1841.
Anonymously published, the book was originally attributed to Lady J.J. Gordon Bremer, the wife of Sir James John Gordon Bremer. However, extensive research by Marcie Muir supports its attribution to Charlotte Barton.[1]
In 1826, following the death of her father, Charlotte Waring came to New South Wales to take up a position as governess to the family of Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur. She became engaged to James Atkinson, a highly-respected agriculturalist and author, during the voyage to Australia. They married in 1827. The couple settled at Atkinson's property Oldbury in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. They had four children, including the author and naturalist Caroline Louisa Waring Calvert (née Atkinson). The children appear, slightly disguised, as the four children of the book.
James Atkinson died in 1834, and Charlotte married George Bruce Barton in March 1836. Tragically, he became insane and Charlotte was forced to separate from him. Barton had a history of alcoholism and violence, and was eventually convicted of manslaughter in Bathurst in 1854.[2]
Charlotte left Oldbury with her children and later moved to Sydney. Her guardianship of her children was resoundingly confirmed as of 6 July 1841 in a decision by C.J. Dowling of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.[3]
It being made manifest, therefore, that Mrs. Barton is herself competent to educate her children either by herself or by any competent assistance under her own eye, it would require a state of urgent circumstances to induce the Court to deprive them (all of whom are under thirteen years of age) of that maternal care and tenderness, which none but a mother can bestow.
A Mother's Offering is written in the genre of children's conversation textbooks, reflecting the importance of family conversation to education in the home in the nineteenth century. Charlotte drew on her own experiences in the colony, and probably on actual conversations with her children, in preparing the text. It is an excellent example of the influence women had on the community through the education of their children.
The book takes the form of dialogues between a mother and her children.[4] The book covers a variety of topics, from geology and natural history to shipwrecks and the customs of the Australian Aborigines. Some parts are quite lurid, such as her description of the wreck of the Charles Eaton, a ship that went down in the Torres Strait in 1834. It was claimed that many children survived the shipwreck only to be eaten by cannibals. Life's dangers were a frequent theme of 19th-century Australian children's fiction.
The book was published by George William Evans (1780-1852), a surveyor who had arrived in Port Jackson in 1802. He led the expedition which crossed the Great Dividing Range in 1813. He returned to England in 1826 but came back to Australia in 1832 and set up as a bookseller and stationer.
In 2005, the book is very rare and a copies sell for high prices.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Muir, Marcie (1980). Charlotte Barton: Australia's first children's author. Sydney: Wentworth Books.
- ^ Clarke, Paticia (1997). Family history and beyond. Private Lives Revealed: Letters, Diaries, History. National Library of Australia. Retrieved on December 13, 2006.
- ^ Atkinson v. Barton. Decisions of the Superior Courts of New South Wales, 1788-1899. Division of Law Macquarie University (2006 (1841)). Retrieved on December 13, 2006.
- ^ a b Meacham, Steve (2005). History's page became our youngsters' stage. Books. Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved on December 13, 2006.
