University of Queensland Press refers to their republished version of Louisa as a 'groundbreaking, award-winning biography of Louisa Lawson, mother of Henry Lawson, major reformer, innovator and journalist, and founding editor of The Dawn. It includes an informative, personal foreword by Louisa' s first publisher, Hilary McPhee. Louisa won a number of prizes in the first year of its publication: The Victorian Premier's Award for Non-Fiction (The Nettie Palmer Prize), The NSW State Award for Literature, The Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society and The John Hetherington Bicentennial Biography Prize (shared). It was also shortlisted for four other awards and was chosen as the best Commonwealth non fiction book for 1988 in The Year's Work in English, 1989.'

[source: University of Queensland Press website]