Louise Mack was born on October 10 1870, in Hobart, Tasmania, the eldest daughter of 13 children of the Reverend Hans Hamilton Mack, a Wesleyan Minister, and his wife, Jemima, née James. The family moved several times during Louise’s childhood, living in Hobart and Adelaide before settling in Sydney, where Louise spent five years at the Sydney Girls’ High School (Miller 71). At Sydney Girls’ High School she formed a lifelong friendship with Ethel Turner. In 1896 she married Sydney barrister John Percy Creed, and worked on the Bulletin until 1901. She travelled to England in 1901 and spent some years living in Florence from 1904 to 1907 where she edited the Italian Gazette. Her husband died in 1914. She was in Belgium for the outbreak of the First World War, where she reported for the Evening News and the Daily Mail. Her experiences were later recounted in A Woman’s Experiences in the Great War, published in 1915. In 1916 she returned to Australia and undertook charitable work for the Red Cross. She lectured in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. In 1924 she remarried, marrying Allen Illingworth Leyland, who died in 1932. She wrote a number of girls’ stories, and romance stories for publishers, Rivers, in the 1900s and Mills and Boon in the 1910s. Louise died on 23 November 1935 in Mosman New South Wales of cerebrovascular disease.
Further Reading
Phelan, Nancy. A Kingdom by the Sea. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1969.
---. The Romantic Lives of Louise Mack. St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, 1991.
---. Setting out on the Voyage: The World of an Incorrigible Adventurer. St Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, 1998.
Links
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition: Mack, Marie Louise Hamilton (1870 - 1935) by Nancy Phelan
Jessie Street National Women's Library Scroll down the list of women to access a link to a pdf Fact File on Louise Mack.
Teens: A Story of Australian Schoolgirls. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1897. 266 pages. Illustrated F. P. Mahoney, b/w frontis. & 13 b/w illus.
Teens is the only Australian school story to be set in a high school. Teens is the story of thirteen-year-old Lennie Leighton and her schooldays at the Girl’s High School in Sydney. Lennie becomes best friends with Mabel James, a classmate. The friendship of Mabel and Lennie and their characters were based on the author’s own friendship with Ethel Turner at the Sydney Girls’ High School. Mabel is fifteen and shares the same birth date as Lennie. Lennie and Mabel’s friendship is tested when they both forget their lunch and quarrel with each other, but they later make it up. Mack writes about their friendship, and the incidents and events that occur in a girls’ school at the turn of the century with great understanding and detail. When Mabel writes a poem, ‘The Schoolgirl’s Dream’, they decide to start a school magazine, calling it The Chronicle . The school is excited about it and the Headmistress plans to have the next number printed. They work hard on their paper but are dismayed when a Sixth Former, Leah Cohen, starts a rival paper. The professional looking rival paper is a sharp contrast to their effort. When the Head questions them Mabel becomes hysterical and Lennie faints and when the schoolgirls realise it is because they are worried about their paper they endeavour to buy all the remaining copies of The Chronicle to help them. In real life, Louise Mack and Ethel Turner were the rivals in the newspaper incident. At the end of Teens Mabel is planning to go to Paris with her Aunt and Uncle for two years and Lennie decides to study hard for the Matriculation. When they say goodbye Lennie realises she will never find another friend like her, and mourns their lost friendship.
Lennie’s adventures are continued in two sequels, Girls Together (1898) and Teens Triumphant (1933) In Girls Together Mabel returns to Australia after spending two years in Paris and her friendship with Lennie is renewed. Mabel becomes engaged to Lennie’s older brother, Bert. When Lennie fails her Junior and her mother falls ill, Lennie takes her mother’s place in their family. In Teens Triumphant, Lennie is studying art in England.
Teens was reprinted frequently; an abridged edition was published by Angus & Robertson in 1924; a new edition by Cornstalk Publishing appeared in 1924 and was reprinted at least four times. There were also editions by several English publishers, Melrose (1904), and Pilgrim Press (1934).
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