AustLit

Mary Leman Grimstone was the daughter of a Suffolk-born lawyer and writer, Leman Thomas Rede. Grimstone was born in Hamburg, as her father had left England to escape his creditors. In 1810, when Grimstone was 10 years old, her father died, and she returned with her mother and siblings to England.

Grimstone left London in 1826, and spent the following three years in Van Diemen's Land to improve her health. The penal colony at Hobart had been established for 22 years at this time. During this period, she wrote most of her novel Woman's Love, which is thought to be the first novel written by a woman in Australia, and is recognised as an early feminist novel.

In 1827, a London newspaper published her controversial views on the culture of Hobart. Comments such as 'Saturn is not more remote from the sun than Hobart Town from all science and literature', outraged the society of the time.

Grimstone wrote several other novels, all published in London between 1825 and 1834, as well as two volumes of poetry under the pseudonym 'Oscar'. She also submitted articles and short stories to English journals and newspapers, and poems to newspapers in Hobart.