'Australie' Emily Manning: an Australian born journalist, poet and novelist.

The journalistic veil has concealed so much of her press work'

Centennial Magazine September 1890

Emily Manning was in her lifetime accorded much praise as a poet. It was not until after her death that her great contribution as one of the first women in journalism in Australia was recognised.

Emily Matilda Manning was born into a well-to-do upper class family in Sydney on the 12th May 1845, a daughter of Sir William Manning, the famous lawyer and politician, and his first wife formerly Emily Wise who died the year after Emily's birth. She was educated at a private school and later Professor John Woolley, first Professor of classics at the University of Sydney, encouraged her to take an interest in literature, From 1860 she lived at 'Wollaroy', the mansion her father, at the time a very wealthy man, had built at Edgecliff.

When Emily was about nineteen she is believed to have been romantically involved with David Scott Mitchell, later the benefactor whose book collection formed the basis of the Mitchell Library. The two were part of the same social circle and exchanged some light-hearted poems in October and November 1864. (1) Emily Manning soon left for London. On the voyage a fellow passenger a Catholic priest, impressed by her mental ability, offered to teach her logic and she spent a portion of each day of the voyage in study. In England she had connections and introductions which allowed her to move into the literary world, meeting Tennyson, Browning, Huxley and George Elliot. She began her journalistic career writing for periodicals including C.F. Yonge's Monthly Packet of Evening Readings which specialised in refined reading for teen age girls, and Golden Hours. Both publications had many distinguished literary contributors. With this experience she was able after her return to Sydney at the beginning of the 1870s to become one of the first regular women contributors to the newspapers and periodicals. From the early 1870s her articles began to appear in the Town and Country Journal, Sydney Morning Herald and Sydney Mail, either anonymously or under the pen-name 'Australie'.

On the 22 December 1873 at the age of twenty eight she married Henry L. Heron, a Sydney solicitor, in due course having six children. William L. Curnow, a clergyman and journalist of the Sydney Morning Herald knew her well and said that she was a 'womanly woman ... She had the old ideas touching what is due from a wife and mother'. (2) Yet from her early years until the time of her death she combined the roles of wife and mother with the writing a constant stream of contributed articles to magazines and newspapers her constancy being remarked on as much as her versatility. Apart from general articles she was also a literary critic, one example being a long review of John Le Gay Brereton's Genesis and Beatitudes which appeared in the Sydney Quarterly Magazine in 1887 under the name of E. Heron.

Much of Emily Manning's press work remained behind the 'journalistic veil of anonymity (3) so that to the public she was known chiefly as the author of a book of poems The Balance of Pain and other Poems published under the name of 'Australie', in London in 1877. The Illustrated Sydney News in an enthusiastic review, said the author was 'well-known as a contributor of both prose and verse to the public journals'.

      'Australie' undoubtedly possesses the true poetic instinct
   combined with more intellectual power that is oftentimes associated
   with the writing of poetry. Her poems are characterised by great
   purity of tone and loftiness of purpose, while many of the pieces
   breathe a touching loftiness of purpose, while many of the pieces
   breathe a touching sentiment and ernest sympathy for the sufferings
   and trials that frequently beset the path of humanity. (4)

During the last months of her life it was said that she was 'more systematically engaged in journalism than ever before and a few days before her death she reported on the opening of the Anglo-Australian Art Exhibition.' (5) At her death an obituary stated that she loved journalism and had hoped to spend many more years in such work. She died at the age of forty-five on 25 August 1890 at Blandville. Her husband had been in financial difficulties from the early 1880s and at her death there were references to her withdrawal from society. It was probably the need to contribute to the family finances that led to her greater involvement in journalism in Sydney newspapers.

Evidence from obituaries and other sources indicate that for twenty years from 1870 she was a contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald and for part of that time she was one of the leader-writers. In 1888 and 1889 she appears to have been the principal female journalist on the Herald's Women's column begun at that time; and for the year before her death she was associate editor of the Illustrated Sydney News where it was said she was distinguished for her critical and painstaking work. (6).

William Curnow who was appointed editor of the Sydney Morning Herald in 1886 said of her death:

      She may truly be said to have died in harness a loss not only
   to those associated with her in her labors, but to the colony
   generally. Australia has many women who write, not a few who have
   given us books and pamphlets, but the number of trained women
   writers and authors is not large, and among the foremost of these
   stood Mrs. Heron. Our scanty literature was made richer by her
   labors, and will be poorer for her death. (7)

The Sydney Morning Herald commented that her journalistic work had continued 'almost to the last' until 'the busy pen of the journalist is done' and praised her professional approach:

      The strong and easy style of which she was the mistress singled
   her out among women writers as much as her man-like grasp for her
   subject, indeed within her own lines, few men had an equal command
   of the qualities that go to make up the character of an effective
   writer. She had incisiveness and earnestness, an intense interest
   in those public questions that appealed to her and, and much
   sterling honesty of purpose. This journal has frequently published
   contributions from her pen, sometimes under the usual journalistic
   veil of anonymity and sometimes under an thoughtful and
   well-considered paper of a stirring subject of discussion at the
   time, which we have reason to believe made an impression in many
   quarters where the name of the writer was not so much as
   suspected. Her practical skill as a literary worker was not more
   marked than her comprehensive taste, which was singularly broad.
   To social subjects she gave much of her mind, and some of her
   contributions to the discussion to questions of sanitation, prison
   discipline, forestry, as well as those domestic matters of
   interest that might seem to come more directly within within the
   province of a woman's treatment have all been dealt with at
   different periods by her versatile pen. The choice of subject was
   characteristic of her intensely earnest mind and her restless
   passion for inquiry, which led her to seek the best and latest
   information on all subjects as well as to keep abreast of current
   questions of the day. (8)

The paper added 'in larger European centres of intellectual activity Mrs. Heron might have moved among the noticeable women of the time'.

Editor's Note. In the recently published book by Toni Johnson Woods Index to Serials in Australian Periodicals. Nineteenth Century under the entry 'Australie' are listed two serials (novels) Cupid on a Swiss Tour (Sydney Mail 1874 26 September-6 February 1875) and. The Story of a Royal Pendulum (Illustrated Sydney News 1890 22 November-29 March 1891)

* This article was published in Pen Portraits. Women writers and journalists in nineteenth century Australia by Patricia Clarke. Pandora Press, 1988

(1) 1 G.D. Richardson 'David Scott Mitchell' Descent' Vol 1 Part 2 1961

(2) 2 William L. Curnow 'Emily Australie Heron' Centenial Magazine Vol.3, No.2, September 1890. Most of the biographical details on Emily Manning aree taken from this article

(3) 3 Curnow Centenial Magazine; Sydney Morning Herald 26 August 1890

(4) 4 [Emily Manning] Australie The Balance of Pain and other Poems London: Gerge Bell, 1877; Illustrated Sydney News 18 August 1877

(5) 5 Curnow Centenial Magazine p.135

(6) 6 Illustrated Sydney News 30 August 1890

(7) 7 Curnow Centenial Magazine p.135

(8) 8 Sydney Morning Herald 26 August 1890