After six weeks of intense work on The Stars Askew, I’m back to work on The Red Earth, my 1890s alternate history, Australian megafauna novel. As part of the research, I’ve been reading selections of the early feminist paper run by Louisa Lawson from Sydney called The Dawn. Here’s a selection I might just to use:

“Woman,” said an ancient writer, “is the crown of creation.”

As to woman’s prerogatives, it matters not surely whether she discourse fearlessly before the multitude, or whether she speak in tones subdued in private sphere, so that she remains true to herself. One wonders why such dubious feelings should be so often entertained with regard to the propriety of a woman speaking to an audience, when she is entreated to sing to he same, and, indeed, almost worshipped for so doing. Also, she should she not as freely speak her thoughts as write them for the world to read? Was there not a Peitho as well as a Mercury?

The Woman of Tomorrow, The Dawn, August 1893