JEWELS: Kate Forsyth
According to family lore, it was picked up on the banks of the River Thames by my great-great-great-great-grandmother the night before she left England forever. Her name was Charlotte Waring, and she was about to set sail across the oceans to the small penal colony of Sydney in the country that would come to be called Australia. She had been employed as a governess to one of the foremost families in the colony, the Macarthurs. She slipped the pebble in her pocket, as a souvenir of her homeland and as a reminder of why she was leaving: Charlotte wanted to build a new life for herself where she could be free. The pebble gave her hope, and she would rub it every time her strength and courage failed.
On the first night aboard the ship, she met the love of her life, a young man named James Atkinson. They were engaged within three weeks, and married a year later. James built her a grand mansion in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Soon after her youngest daughter was born, James died of typhoid and Charlotte was left a widow with four young children. She struggled on alone, but a violent attack by bushrangers caused a great scandal in the colonies and Charlotte married hurriedly to protect her children’s name. Her new husband proved to be violent and unpredictable. Eventually Charlotte fled her second marriage, riding with her four young children through the wild and dangerous gorges of the Shoalhaven river to refuge in Sydney. She applied to the trustees of her first husband’s estate for some income, only to have them deny her and accuse her of impropriety. A bitter court battle followed as Charlotte fought for custody of her own chidlren. During those dark and difficult years, Charlotte often drew the pebble out of her pocket, a kind of lucky talisman to give her new strength.
In July 1841, she won her court case, a landmark victory for women’s rights in Australia. A few months later, she published the first children’s book published in Australia. The proceeds from her quill enabled her to support her family till her son was old enough to inherit his father’s estate.
After her death, her eldest daughter Charlotte Elizabeth found the small brown pebble in her mother’s jewellery box. She had often seen her mother holding it, and knew it was a little piece of England that had travelled all the way to Ausrtalia in her mother’s pocket. She had it polished and hung from a golden bracelet, as a reminder of her mother’s courage and fortitude. She added other charms, mementoes of her own life, including a tiny cameo of a gumnut carved by her youngest sister, who was the first Australian-born female novelist and a famous artist and botanist. Her daughter Flora inherited the bracelet, and added her own charms, and so too did her daughter Sarah Mabel and her daughter Elvira, who was my great-aunt Bobby.
The charm bracelet is one of my family’s greatest treasures, and will in time be passed down to my sister Belinda, who has the darn good luck to be the eldest girl in the family. We hope it will continued to be treasured for many more generations to come.
Kate Forsyth wrote her first novel aged seven & has now sold more than a million books worldwide.
The Blue Rose is set in Revolutionary France and Imperial China, and was inspired by the true story of the quest for a blood-red rose. Other novels for adults include include Beauty in Thorns, a reimagining of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ set amongst the passions and scandals of the Pre-Raphaelites; Bitter Greens, which won the 2015 American Library Association award for Best Historical Fiction; The Wild Girl, the story of the forbidden romance behind the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, which was named the Most Memorable Love Story of 2013; The Beast’s Garden, a reimagining of the Grimm brothers’ version of ‘Beauty & the Beast’ set in Nazi Germany; and The Silver Well, a collection of seven interlinking stories co-written with Kim Wilkins.
Kate’s books for children and young adults include the collection of feminist fairy-tale retellings Vasilisa the Wise & Other Tales of Brave Young Women, illustrated by Lorena Carrington, which came second in the Fairies and Folklore category of the 2018 Readers Favorite book awards in the US. It’s sequel, The Buried Moon and Other Tales of Bright Young Women, has recently been released. The Impossible Quest, her fantasy adventure series for children, has been optioned for a film; and The Puzzle Ring, named an ‘Unsung Hero’ of 2009 by international bloggers.
Named one of Australia’s Favourite 15 Novelists, Kate is a direct descendant of Charlotte Waring Atkinson, the author of the first book for children ever published in Australia.
Writing is in their blood
180 years ago, Australia’s first children’s book was published by an anonymous writer known only as ‘a lady long resident in New South Wales’.
The identity of the author was one of Australia’s most puzzling literary mysteries until 1981, when she was finally given a name: Charlotte Waring Atkinson.
Today, her great-great-great-great-granddaughters Kate Forsyth and Belinda Murrell are also celebrated authors. They grew up on stories about Charlotte’s life of love, grief and violence—about her struggle to assert an independent spirit. A bestselling author, she was an early Australian artist and a pioneer in the fight for women’s legal rights, waging a bitter court battle for the right to raise her own children.
In Searching for Charlotte, Kate and Belinda embark on a voyage of discovery that investigates family history, writing, motherhood, what changes and what stays the same.
It is a journey that will transform everything they thought they knew about their family …
Searching for Charlotte is out now. You can find out more about Kate's work here, and order her books here. Kate also tutors for the Australian Writers Centre - last year I studied cross-genre fiction with her for five fascinating weeks - highly recommended!
