Bush Studies

Barbara Janet Ainsleigh Baynton, Lady Headley was an Australian writer, made famous for Bush Studies which was written in retaliation to Henry Lawson's works. Baynton was born in 1857 at Scone, Hunter River district, New South Wales, the daughter of Irish bounty immigrants, John Lawrence and... Elizabeth Ewart, although she claimed to be born in 1862 to Penelope Ewart and Captain Robert Kilpatrick, of the Bengal Light Cavalry. This fiction gave her "entrée to polite circles as a governess" and, in 1880, she married Alexander Frater, the son of her employers. They soon moved to the Coonamble district, and had two sons and a daughter. However, Alexander Frater ran off with a servant, Sarah Glover, in 1887, and Barbara moved to Sydney and commenced divorce proceedings. A decree absolute was granted 4 March 1890. On 5 March 1890 she married Dr Thomas Baynton, a retired surgeon aged 70 years who had literary friends. A few years later she began contributing short stories to the Bulletin and six of these were published in 1902 in London by Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd under the title of Bush Studies, Mrs Baynton unable to find a publisher for them in Sydney.
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