Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Acknowledgments
So many people have helped me with this book that it should probably be regarded
as a collective enterprise. Even so, there are particular debts that I should
like to acknowledge.
Many South Australians offered me time and information when I was first carrying
out research on Catherine Spence. I would like to thank especially Mrs A. A.
Abbie, Mrs R. N. Beckwith, Mrs C. Barham Black, Miss M. E. Crompton, Miss
Phyllis Crompton, Mrs Nancy Jones, the Reverend Allen Kirby, Mr Patric Morice,
Mrs Rose Moore, Mr Moxom Simpson and Miss E. G. Walker. To Mrs Marjorie
Caw I owe more than I can adequately acknowledge here.
I am grateful, too, to the staff of the South Australian Archives and Newspaper
Reading Room, and to the staff of the Petherick room in the Australian National
Library, particularly to Mrs Pauline Fanning. I first began reading about Spence
at the suggestion of Manning Clark, and under the guidance of Douglas Pike and
Barry Smith. I wish to thank them, and Kathleen Woodroofe, for comments on my
work which encouraged me to take it further. That, however, was some time ago.
Two friends – Eric Fry and John Merritt – gave me the support and challenge that
I needed to take up again the questions that Catherine Spence’s story raised for me.
Many of those questions arose from discussions current in the Women’s Liberation
Movement in Canberra throughout the 1970s. I learned more from them, I
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