Baynton, Barbara (1857–1929)
Baynton, Barbara (1857–1929)
Australian short-story writer. Name variations: Lady Headley. Born Barbara Janet Ainsleigh Lawrence, 1857, in Scone, NSW, Australia; died May 28, 1929, in Melbourne, Australia; 5th daughter and 8th of 9 children of Elizabeth and John Lawrence (aka Robert Kilpatrick, a carpenter); educated in public schools; married Alexander Frater Jr., June 24, 1880 (div. Mar 4, 1890); married Dr. Thomas Baynton (then a 70-year-old retired surgeon), Mar 5, 1890 (died June 1904); married George Allanson-Winn, 5th Lord Headley, Feb 21, 1921 (sep. 1922); children: (1st m.) Alexander III (b. 1881), Robert (b. 1883) and Elizabeth Penelope (b. 1885); great-grandmother of Penne Hackforth-Jones.
Author who primarily depicted women of the Australian bush, was a well known literary hostess and collector of antiques in London; created a persona for herself equal to any character in her stories, reworking her past in order to escape from her blue-collar roots in New South Wales, Australia, into blue-blood society in England; works, which depict harshness of life for women in Australian bush, include Bush Studies (1902) and Human Toll (1907).
See also Penne Hackforth-Jones, Barbara Baynton: Between Two Worlds (Penguin, 1989); Thea Astley, Three Australian Writers (Townsville Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, 1979).