Pseudonyms and Apologia

While reviewers differentiated between the worth of the books based on gender expectations, women writers also approached their audiences differently to men modifying their approach to meet critical reception. These women suggest that they write to amuse and entertain, and as a genteel leisure time pursuit. Apologia in the Preface or Note to the Reader written, perhaps to pre-empt some of the criticism they believed may be levelled at them.Gumsucker (Sarah Roland) begins Rosalie’s Reward or The Fairy Treasure by saying demurely:

Should this story be favourable (sic) received by the little folks for whom it is written, it is the Author’s intention to publish a series of Tales, so that the merry children of the fair South may revel in dreams of their own Fairy Lore.

Wilcken (1891) also revealed that it was only that under pressure from friends that she printed her stories and that ‘it seemed ungracious to refuse such a request’. (Preface)

Another way of avoiding criticism was to use a pseudonym (Kesley, para. 10) as did Roland, pseudonym ‘Gumsucker’, and Jane Davies, pseudonym ‘Desda’ whose humility in offering her writing to the public contrasts sharply with her description as ‘an ambitious poetess and semi-professional soprano’ (Angus Trumble, blog entry, 2011). Davies (1871) referred to her book The Rival Fairies as a flawed attempt at writing and alluded to her doubts about publishing the book:

The following little story was written for the amusement of my own children. At the suggestion of several friends, I have ventured to publish it, not with sundry misgivings as to the results of my temerity. I cannot be blind to its many imperfections, nor do I expect the public to be. I only appeal to their kindly hearts, and (as it is a first attempt) beg them not to criticise it too severely. (Preface)

While many of the early Australian women fairy tale writers express their motive with modesty the men who write harbour no such doubts. Westbury (1897) challenged his readers and painted a strong masculine visual image, drawing in Australians young and old to take up the search for an enchanted Australian fairy world with him.

 Come, youngsters, draw up your chairs. Come, mothers, ye who live your romantic girlhood o'er again in that of your children. Form up, gentlemen, fathers, hard men of the world, whose brows are wrinkled with care and worry, take rank in rear of your fair helpmates. Merchant, lock thy safe, close thy ledgers; horny-handed sons of toil, throw aside your implements of trade; gather near. I am going to draw aside the magic curtain which hides the great continent, marked on our map UNKNOWN. (Australian Fairy Tales, p. 9)