Mary Lee, Denise George’s biography of a ‘turbulent anarchist’ and her battle for women’s rights is a perfect companion to Clare Wright’s recently published You Daughters of Freedom (which I reviewed here). That’s because Wright’s book about the struggle for women’s suffrage in Australia and beyond – comprehensive though it is – pays scant attention to the event that started it all in Australia: the achievement of the women’s vote in South Australia in 1894. Had it not been for women’s suffrage in South Australia, those ‘founding fathers’ would not have had to negotiate women’s suffrage in the new rules for voting in the very first federal election. As Wright makes very clear, the South Australians were ready to derail federation altogether if their women were not allowed to vote, and it was inconceivable that women in some states could vote and others could not. The parliament was snookered, and so women got the vote!

Yet the South Australian story of women’s suffrage is barely known. Denise George deserves all credit for unearthing the story from obscurity, because as the blurb tells us, Lee’s journals and most of her letters, along with a dearth of recorded women’s history, kept her contribution hidden for more than 125 years. Mary Lee is a woman whose statue should not only be among the gentlemen of the South Australian parliament, she should be prominently acknowledged in our national parliament as well. (I will be delighted if someone who lives in Canberra inspects the building to see if she is).

Mary Lee, suffragist and social advocate, really was an amazing woman. She was nearly sixty when she and her daughter Evelyn landed in Australia to look after her gravely ill son Benjamin, and after he died she threw herself into battle to improve the lives of women.

The list of causes she took on is impressive – everything from raising the age of consent to sixteen (from— can you believe it? ten years old in 1875) to ending capital punishment, but it was her extraordinary determination to achieve votes for women that is her most important achievement.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/10/16/mary-lee-by-denise-george-bookreview/ ( )