Australia’s first published …

Children’s Book, 1841

A Mother’s Offering

When Charlotte Barton wrote this book she was in dire financial straits, fleeing from a violent husband, trying to look after four children between the ages of thirteen and seven, and fighting legal battles to prevent the children being removed from her.

This is the first children’s book to be published in Australia, released in December 1841 in time for the Christmas market. It was published anonymously by ‘A Lady, Long Resident in New South Wales’.

The book is a collection of morally uplifting stories of events in Australia’s history in the form of a dialogue between a mother and her four children. Included were tales of the Aborigines and their customs, of shipwrecks on the Australian coast and of faraway places such as Port Essington.

There were also descriptions of Australian plants and animals. The book was well reviewed but it was not reprinted until 1979.
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