Mollie Skinner

Mary Louisa ("Mollie") Skinner (19 September 1876 – 25 May 1955) was an Australian Quaker, nurse and writer born in Perth.^[1] She wrote a memoir describing her experiences during the First World War. Mollie was the co-owner of a guesthouse in Darlington, Western Australia, where D. H. Lawrence stayed, shortly after arriving in the country in 1922. Her draft novel The House of Ellis was rewritten by Lawrence and published as The Boy in the Bush in August 1924.

Skinner's autobiography was edited by Mary Durack Miller while Skinner's health was failing and later published posthumously in 1972.^[2]

A street in the Canberra suburb Cook was named in her honour.

References

• Pell, O. and Birman, W. Skinner, Mary Louisa (Mollie) (1876 - 1955), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, Melbourne University Press, 1988, pp 625–626.

Further reading

• Bartlett, Norman (1984) Mollie Skinner and The Boy in the Bush. Quadrant, July/Aug. 1984, p. 73-75.
• Pell, Olive, (1988). Mollie Skinner. p. 59-64 of - Brian Dibble, Don Grant, Glen Phillips (eds) Celebrations : a bicentennial anthology of fifty years of Western Australian poetry and prose Nedlands, W.A : University of Western Australia Press. 0855642939 (pbk.)
• Rees, Marjorie (1964) Mollie Skinner and D.H. Lawrence Westerly, March 1964.