Julia S HarrisThe elusive Julia S. Harris is as ghostly as her writing-like many talented women authors, she has almost completely disappeared from the written record. Harris owned her status as a woman writer within Adelaide's writing community by often adopting he pen name 'Mrs Robert Harris'; while other evidence of her life has been lost to time, her pen name reveals to us that she was the wife of a Robert Harris. She was also the mother of an Elizabeth Fortesque, who passed away at just five months old. She likely helped to support her family with the money she made from small writing prizes, such as the Western Mail's Christmas story competition, translating the tragedy of her personal life into stories of murder, betrayal, and doomed romance. Such serialised works, including The Oakhurst Tragedy and Sir Jaspar's Ward, or the Wraith of Trevor Park, were published in the Adelaide Observer, the South Australian Chronicle, the Western Mail, and the Healesville Guardian. In another of her works, Euphemia Redmond: the Guardian Spirit of Knockmey Hall, Harris included the epigraph from poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: All houses in which men have lived and died Are haunted houses. Such a sentiment is echoed in Harris' oeuvre, as she uses the symbolic haunted house to interrogate aspects of Australian culture that remain relevant to her contemporaries. Many of Harris' stories explore the sinister histories of gendered violence, xenophobia, and class discrimination that lurk behind the stately English manor. Her work may be interpreted as an Australian's critique or rejection of a culture inherited from our colonial predecessors. Corella Press is proud to restore Harris' unique voice to Australian literary history. Read More Read Less