Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Preface
D uring her long life Catherine Helen Spence sought to make her voice heard
in a world dominated by men. She penned editorials, delivered sermons and
spoke at public meetings both in Australia, in the United States and in Britain. Both
by her own example and in her support for women’s cause, she sought ‘to unbridle
the tongues of women’. Although she was well-known in her day, indeed renowned
as the ‘Grand Old Woman of Australia’ at her death in 1910, knowledge of her life
of achievements slipped in subsequent years. When in 1985, Susan Magarey published
her prize-winning biography of Spence, Unbridling the Tongues of Women,
Spence had become largely forgotten. Unbridling did more than recover the story of
Spence’s life and work, it suggested new approaches to Australian history. It was the
first biography of a first-wave Australian feminist written by a second-wave feminist
historian. As such it inspired and set an example of feminist biography and history
which has seen a great outpouring of feminist historical and literary scholarship in
biographies of Australian feminist activists and of Australian women writers; Spence
herself was of course both a writer and a political activist. Unbridling must also be
located as an influential early text in the development of Australian feminist history
in the last three decades. In this and her other work, Susan Magarey has achieved
much in the on-going campaigns to ensure that women’s voices and perspectives are
heard in public debate.
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