The children – Meg, Pip, Judy, Nell, Bunty, Baby and the General – are not quite what one would expect of Victorian children, and as the author says, they are not the paragons of good that their English cousins appear to be. The first time we meet the Woolcot children – seven of them – at nursery tea whilst their father, and step-mother feast downstairs with guests on food the children would never see in their wildest dreams. And fifty-three years later, one of the best-loved children’s books to come out of Australia was published – Seven Little Australiansby Ethel Turner, published in 1894. Charlotte Waring Atkinson, great-great-great-great grandmother to my favourite author, Kate Forsyth, wrote the first children’s book published in Australia in 1841 – “A Mother’s Offering to Her Children” by a Lady Long Resident in New South Wales. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.Īmongst Australian literature, and especially children’s literature, women were amongst the first to publish it. Synopsis: ‘Without doubt Judy was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest.’Her father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, ‘the General’. Published: 1st October 2003 (1894 originally) Genre: Historical Fiction/Children’s literature
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