Louise Mack

Marie Louise Hamilton Mack (10 October 1870 – 23 November 1935) was an Australian poet, journalist and novelist. She is most known for her writings and her involvement in World War I in 1914 as the first woman war correspondent in Belgium.

Early life and education

Mack was born in Hobart, Tasmania. She was the seventh of thirteen children. Her father, Hans Hamilton Mack, was a Wesleyan minister who moved the family from state to state on account of his work. By the time she was ready for secondary school, the family had taken up residence in Sydney. Mack attended Sydney Girls High School where she met Ethel Turner.

Career

From 1898 until 1901, Mack wrote "A Woman's Letter" for The Bulletin. Her first novel was published in 1896 and her only collection of poetry in 1901. Following this she travelled to England and Europe and did not return to Australia until 1916.

Mack wrote sixteen novels over nearly 40 years. The Spectator wrote in 1903 about her third novel, Girls Together, a companion piece to Teens: A Story of Australian School Girls, that "the narrative is distinctly interesting. The study of character is excellent".

War correspondent

In 1914, when war broke out Louise Mack was in Belgium where she continued to work as the first woman war correspondent for the Evening News and the London Daily Mail. Her eye-witness account of the German invasion of Antwerp and her adventures—A Woman's Experiences in the Great War—was published in 1915.

She was not only the first woman to be a war correspondent but she was also the first Australian to study the Germans this closely during this time. She was under shell-fire for thirty-six hours in Antwerp, and at one point went right through German lines to the city of Brussels.