That Mad Louisa

Richard Handley tells the courageous story of Louisa Lawson, a leader in the fight for women’s rights and a significant character in Australian history. He highlights the great courage she showed in coping with her problems and the determination and fighting spirit in confronting male chauvinism and the subjugation of women in nineteenth-century Australia. Louisa emerges as the foremost feminist writer of her day and as a gifted poet. In the past, her reputation has suffered and her importance has been ignored, with the biographers of Henry Lawson, her son, painting her as a careless, uncaring, and sexually repressed wife. Richard Handley’s That Mad Louisa has addressed that situation, highlighting her championing of women’s welfare and equality, her Australian patriotism, her inventiveness, publishing and journalistic qualities, and her charitable works.