Catherine Martin

Catherine Edith Macauley Martin (1848 – 15 March 1937) was an Australian novelist who used the pseudonyms M.C. and Mrs Alick MacLeod, also published anonymously.

Early life

Martin was born in Ben Mohr Estate, Snizort, Isle of Skye, Inverness-shire in 1847, the fourth and youngest daughter of Samuel Nicholson Mackay and Janette Mackay, (née McKinnon) (died 23 June 1891) emigrated to South Australia in 1855 and shortly after moved to Naracoorte where many Scottish farmers had settled. Her father died in 1856, and little is known of how the family survived and how the children were educated, but Martin certainly had a grounding in French and German. It was common in such circumstances for a well-educated widow to run a small school from home, providing both a family income and education for her own children.

Career

By 1874, she was living at Mount Gambier, where she and her sister Mary ran a school for girls. In that year she published a volume of poems, and her name remained unknown to the public, though she had published poems and verse translations in the Adelaide and Mount Gambier newspapers from 1868 or earlier. She came to Adelaide, where she befriended Catherine Helen Spence and did journalistic work, including serial stories, The Moated Grange in 1877 and A Bohemian Born as "M.C." for the Christmas period 1878.

In 1877 she was appointed a clerk in the Education Department, an unusual job for a woman, and welcomed, but lost it in 1885, three years after her marriage, a case of discrimination, suggests the Oxford Companion.