Kathleen Mannington Caffyn, ''née'' Hunt (c. 1855 – 6 February 1926) was an Irish-Australian novelist.

Life

Kathleen was born in

Tipperary Tipperary is the name of: Places *County Tipperary, a county in Ireland **North Tipperary, a former administrative county based in Nenagh **South Tipperary, a former administrative county based in Clonmel *Tipperary (town), County Tipperary's na ...

, Ireland, daughter of William de Vere Hunt, and related to Aubrey de Vere, the poet. She was educated by English and German governesses and moved to London at about 21 years of age. She trained as a nurse and married in 1879 Stephen Mannington Caffyn, a medical practitioner (1851–1896), who was born at Salehurst, Sussex. She moved with him to Sydney in 1880. In 1883 they went to Melbourne, where Dr Caffyn had suburban practices, and lived in

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

until 1892, when they returned to London. Mrs Mannington Caffyn was a founder of the District Nursing Society in Victoria and served on its committee for around two years. Caffyn had a love of horses and kept up her interest in hunting and polo until her death in

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...

, Italy on 6 February 1926. She was survived by a son.

Writings

Mrs Caffyn contributed a story of some 60 pages to ''Cooee: Tales of Australian Life by Australian Ladies'' (1891), and wrote a nove
''A Yellow Aster''
which was published in London in 1894 under the pseudonym "Iota", but had been written in Australia, as the saga of a free-thinking, agnostic family. It had immediate success and was quickly followed by ''Children of Circumstance'' (1892) and some 15 other volumes in the 20 years that followed. These included ''A Quaker Grandmother'' (1896)
''Anne Mauleverer''
(1899)
''He for God Only''
(1903), and ''Patricia: a Mother'' (1903), which rank among her better novels and were popular in their time. All her novels except her first were written after her return to England. Her last novel was ''Merry Mirrilies'' (1916). In Australia her husband contributed to '' The Bulletin'' in its early days, and published ''Miss Milne and I'' (1889), a novel which ran into two or three editions. This was followed by ''Poppy's Tears'' (1890). He also wrote a few medical pamphlets.

Reminiscence

Caffyn Place in the Canberra suburb of Garran is named in her honour.

References

Sources

*Adelaide, Debra (1988) ''Australian women writers: a bibliographic guide'', London, Pandora *Geulah Solomon,
Caffyn, Stephen Mannington (1850–1896)
, ''

Australian Dictionary of Biography The ''Australian Dictionary of Biography'' (ADB or AuDB) is a national co-operative enterprise founded and maintained by the Australian National University (ANU) to produce authoritative biographical articles on eminent people in Australia's ...

'', Volume 3, MUP, 1969, pp. 325–327 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Caffyn, Kathleen 1850s births 1926 deaths 19th-century Australian novelists 20th-century Australian novelists Australian women novelists Irish emigrants to colonial Australia 20th-century Australian women writers 19th-century Australian women writers 19th-century Australian writers People from the Colony of Victoria