Caroline Leane, who wrote as 'Agnes Neale', was the eighth child of Thomas and Jennie Leane. In 1852, when Caroline was three, the family came to Australia on the Gloucester. They first lived at Hackney, near the River Torrens, then moved to a farm at Gawler River. In 1858 the family moved to Old Blumberg (Birdwood) and 4 years later lived at Philp Town (Chain of Ponds), where her father owned the Post Office and was a shoemaker. He was also a prominent Methodist Preacher.
Caroline never married. By 1877, two years after the death of her father, she had settled in Adelaide, living with her mother and her sister Emma Jane in 'Linna Cottage' in Tucker St, off Hutt Road. She was a prominent member of the Pirie St Methodist Church and a supporter of the Royal Society for the Blind. She was involved in the establishment of the Young Women's Christian Association (1879), a member of the Rose of Adelaide Union, Daughters of Temperance Benefit Society, and one of the first women associates of the Adelaide Literary Society, where she won several prizes.
During the 16 years she lived in Adelaide she became a prolific and widely published writer. She had already had 3 short stories published in the Youth Journal of the Adelaide Miscellany in 1871-2, and her first poems had appeared in the Methodist Journal in 1874, but between 1877 - 1889 she published an enormous number of poems, short stories, serials and songs in various journals (see below), and had her own collection of poems and her serialized story Kathleen published. Her religious beliefs were the foundation of all her writings. She was an invalid for many years, suffering considerable pain before her death in 1892.
Caroline's sister Jemima Clatworthy (qv) also wrote verse.
