AustLit

Although listed in Miller and Macartney, popular English novelist Helen Mathers appears never to have visited Australia. In a letter to Douglas Sladen she remarks 'I only wish I had travelled as you have done - one's hands are so tied by being a woman.' (Letters from Helen Mathers in the correspondence files of Douglas Sladen held by Richmond Central Reference Library, Richmond, Surrey.)

Several of Mathers's novels were published in Australia and at least one of her works, Sam's Sweetheart, has an Australian connection - it is partly set in Bendigo, Victoria, and the heroine is supposedly the daughter of an Englishman and an Australian Aboriginal woman.