Rachel Henning

Rachel Henning
Born	(1826-04-29)29 April 1826 Bristol, England
Died	23 August 1914(1914-08-23) (aged 88) Hunter's Hill, New South Wales, Australia
Notable works	The Letters of Rachel Henning
Spouse	Deighton Taylor ​ ​ (m. 1866; died 1900)​

Rachel Henning (29 April 1826 – 23 August 1914) was an English-born Australian woman who posthumously gained fame for her letters. Born in England, Henning moved to Australia in 1854 to join her siblings on a farm in Appin. After initially struggling to adapt to Australian life, she briefly returned to England in 1856 before rejoining her family. She later lived on her brother's sheep station in rural Queensland, where she grew to appreciate Australian life. In 1866, Henning married and settled near Wollongong. After her husband's death, she moved to her brother's home in Sydney, where she lived until her death in 1914.

During Henning's life she wrote a large body of letters, primarily to her siblings. In her letters she describes her life in Australia, focusing on ordinary domestic matters like gardening and the management of her household. Her collected letters were acquired by the editor of The Bulletin, David Adams, and were published in the periodical as a serial between August 1951 and January 1952. At least nine editions of the letters have since been published in book form. While Adams' editing of the letters has been criticised by modern scholars, Henning's letters have been described as a valuable historical document that reflects the lives of ordinary nineteenth-century women in the Australian bush.

Biography

Rachel Henning, pictured c. 1850

Rachel Henning was born on 29 April 1826 in Bristol, England, to the clergyman Charles Wansbrough Henning and his wife Rachel Lydia (née Biddulph). She had four siblings who survived to adulthood—a brother named Biddulph, and sisters Annie, Amy, and Etta. Their youngest siblings, Henry and Constance, died of scarlet fever in 1841. As the eldest child, Rachel was left as the de facto head of household at the age of nineteen after her father and mother died of tuberculosis in 1840 and 1845 respectively.^[1][2][3]

Rachel's brother Biddulph had been in poor health since surviving the 1841 scarlet fever epidemic that took the lives of Henry and Constance, and eventually decided to move to Australia for the sake of his health after suffering a lung haemorrhage.^[2][3] In 1853 Biddulph and Annie moved to Sydney, and the following year they were joined by Rachel and Amy. The siblings initially lived on a farm in Appin, before Biddulph secured a farm of his own near Bulli. Rachel became homesick and struggled to adjust to her life in Australia. In 1856 she decided to return to England, where she lived with her sister Etta and her husband.^[1][4] In 1861 she returned to Australia.^[1][5]

During Rachel's time in England, Biddulph had relocated to Queensland; Rachel and Annie moved to his station near Bowen the year after her return. She greatly enjoyed life in Queensland on his station, Exmoor.^[1][4] In 1865 Rachel left Exmoor, and a few months later she married Biddulph's overseer Deighton Taylor. They initially lived near the Myall River, where Taylor managed a logging company. They then moved to a farm near Stroud, before selling it and moving to a farm near Wollongong in 1872.^[1]

In 1896 Rachel moved to Ryde in Sydney, where her husband died in 1900. She and Annie moved in with Biddulph at his home in Hunter's Hill after the death of his wife. She died on 23 August 1914 at their home and was buried in the Field of Mars Cemetery.^[1]

Letters

Contents

Rachel Henning wrote a large body of letters to members of her family during her lifetime, many of which were collected by her family after her death. The earliest of Rachel's collected letters were written around 1853 and are addressed to Biddulph and Annie following their move to Australia.^[1][6] The majority of the letters are addressed to Etta, who remained in England after Rachel and Amy joined their siblings in Australia in 1854, as well as to Amy, who moved to Bathurst to marry a man named Thomas Sloman the following year.^[1] The last letter within the collection was written in Australia in November 1882.^[7] The letters describe Rachel's daily life and often explore domestic matters like gardening, fashion, housework, and the management of the household staff.^[8][9] Henning initially expresses an intense homesickness, before gradually developing more positive sentiments towards Australian life and the Australian landscape.^[6][10]

Publication history

After Henning's death, her letters were collected and stored by the Henning family. They were eventually secured by David Adams, the editor of The Bulletin; how Adams became aware of the letters is unknown.^[5][7] The letters were published in The Bulletin between 8 August 1951 and 16 January 1952, with Adams acting as the series' editor and Norman Lindsay providing pen illustrations.^[1][4][7] The letters were each around four or five pages in length, and were serialised on a weekly basis.^[11]

In 1952 the letters were published by The Bulletin in book form and sold 10,000 copies within a year. The book was reprinted in 1954.^[12] The first hardback edition, published by an imprint of Angus & Robertson, was published in 1963.^[13] The letters began to feature heavily in school and university curriculums towards the end of the 1960s following the release of a new paperback edition by Penguin Books. They entered primary school curriculums in the late 1970s following the publication of an abridged schools' edition, newly edited by Ida Veitch.^[14] The letters were published in both Australia and the United Kingdom by Penguin Books as part of its "Lives & Letters" series in 1986, alongside a new hardback edition by Angus & Robertson.^[15] A new edition was published as part of the Penguin Australian Women's Library series in 1988.^[16] As of 2012, The Letters of Rachel Henning was the most-sold collection of letters published in Australia, with nine editions of the letters published in total.^[17]

Editing criticism

Adams' editing of the letters, which is the basis for all published editions of the letters apart from the abridged 1979 schools' edition,^[18] has been criticised by more recent scholars. In 1994, the researcher Anne Allingham published an article in the journal Australian Literary Studies comparing Adams' edited series to the original letters, and concluded that he had been careless in his editing.^[6][19] Adams included only 90 of Henning's 167 microfilmed letters in the series, and removed material from some of the letters that he included.^[19] In addition to making various stylistic changes, some of which changed the meaning of Henning's writing, Adams often omitted repeated content and passing mentions of mundane details, and removed or shortened Henning's original greetings and farewells to her recipients in order to maintain the letters' pace.^[20][21] Adams did not acknowledge or document these editing practices when publishing the letters.^[20][22] Allingham writes that Adams "deleted, distorted, and defaced" the letters, and that his treatment of the original text "shocks professional historians".^[22]

Many descriptions of conflicts within the family and unflattering comments about those in Henning's life were omitted from the published series.^[6][19] Scholars have argued that Adams' editing created a softer and more wholesome version of Henning, omitting her sometimes snobbish and blunt comments about those around her, as well as her writing about politics, religion, family disputes, and business dealings.^[23][24][25] Allingham speculates that Adams may have edited out Henning's negative comments about her acquaintances in order to avoid the possibility of legal action by their descendants or in order to avoid causing them offence.^[26] In a 2012 article, the editor and publisher Bryony Cosgrove pointed out that Allingham's criticism of Adams' editing neglected the role of the Henning family—who still held the copyright for the letters—in omitting parts of their contents out of concern for the family's privacy.^[27]

Allingham writes that Adams' editing choices were shaped by his training as a journalist, and that he selected the letters that would best suit his narrative.^[28] Cosgrove agrees, saying that the letters were edited to create a nationalist narrative about Henning's eventual change of heart and her embrace of the Australian colony that would appeal to 1950s readers.^[29] She writes that Adams' editing was effective in achieving this goal, producing a collection that simultaneously reads "like historical autobiography, like an epistolary novel, and like a collection of authentic letters, seemingly offering the unmediated experience of a nineteenth-century woman", and that this perception of the letters as "candid" and "unadulterated" was key to their appeal.^[30] Cosgrove concludes that "Rachel Henning" as she is known today is a character that has been constructed by the Henning family, by Adams and Lindsay, and by the various publishers who have reprinted her letters.^[31]

Analysis and reception

The researcher Dorothy Jones has called the letters an "important historical document" that provides "a wealth of information on pioneering domestic life from a middle-class, Anglo-oriented viewpoint".^[2] She writes that the letters are a valuable source of information about elements of women's lives in the Australian bush during Henning's era.^[9]

Henning's letters have been described as written from a middle-class, class-bound perspective, and often exhibit a concern for the maintenance of her social status.^[32][33] Henning frequently writes about her "servant problems", and the difficulty of finding suitable staff and maintaining appropriate class boundaries in the Australian context.^[2][34][35] The letters also reflect her sense of displacement upon her move to Australia. Scholars have argued that this is reflected in her writing about gardening and the Australian natural landscape. In her early writing, Henning often expresses her dislike of the bush and Australian flowers, and her longing for English wildflowers. But she eventually develops an appreciation of Australian native flora.^[10][36] Paula Hamilton and Dorothy Jones argue that Henning's gardening represents an attempt to "make the Australian landscape more amenable to herself" and improve her sense of belonging by growing familiar English plants.^[37]

While Henning is unlikely to have foreseen the publication of her letters, it was common for letters to be shared within families and forwarded on to others. Scholars argue that Henning's writing displays a consciousness that her letters were likely to be read by a wider audience, and represent a type of autobiographical expression featuring a deliberately constructed self-image.^[38][39] Jones argues that the letters reflect the "fragmented, interrupted quality" of Henning's—and other women's—daily lives, and formed a kind of serial novel for her recipients.^[9]

References

Citations

1. Caldwell, Margaret (1972). "Rachel Biddulph Henning (1826–1914)". In Pike, Douglas (ed.). Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 4. Carlton: Melbourne University Publishing. ISBN 0522840345. Retrieved 27 December 2025.
2. Jones 2001, p. 188.
3. Allingham 1994, p. 262.
4. Wilde, William H.; Hooton, Joy; Andrews, Barry, eds. (1994). "Henning, Rachel". The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (2 ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-553381-1.
5. Cosgrove 2012, p. 76.
6. Jones, Dorothy (2005). "Henning, Rachel (1826-1914)". In Benson, Eugene; Conolly, L. W. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (2 ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-48432-6. ProQuest 2137930712.
7. Allingham 1994, p. 263.
8. Hamilton & Jones 1986, pp. 86–88.
9. Jones 2001, p. 190.
10. Lear 1998, pp. 161, 163–165.
11. Cosgrove 2012, p. 77.
12. Cosgrove 2012, p. 82.
13. Cosgrove 2012, p. 83.
14. Cosgrove 2012, p. 85.
15. Cosgrove 2012, pp. 87–88.
16. Cosgrove 2012, p. 89.
17. Cosgrove 2012, p. 74.
18. Cosgrove 2012, p. 86.
19. Jones 2001, p. 191.
20. Cosgrove 2012, p. 78.
21. Allingham 1994, pp. 270–272.
22. Allingham 1994, p. 272.
23. Cosgrove 2012, pp. 79–80.
24. Allingham 1994, p. 267.
25. Lear 2001, p. 392.
26. Allingham 1994, p. 268.
27. Cosgrove 2012, pp. 77–78.
28. Allingham 1994, pp. 265–266.
29. Cosgrove 2012, pp. 81–82.
30. Cosgrove 2012, p. 75.
31. Cosgrove 2012, p. 90.
32. Jones 2001, pp. 190–191.
33. Lear 2001, p. 393.
34. Hamilton & Jones 1986, pp. 93–94.
35. Lear 2001, pp. 396–397.
36. Lear 2001, pp. 392–392.
37. Hamilton & Jones 1986, pp. 91–92.
38. Jones 2001, p. 189.
39. Hamilton & Jones 1986, p. 85.

Works cited

• Allingham, Anne (1 May 1994). "Challenging the Editing of the Rachel Henning Letters". Australian Literary Studies. 16 (3): 262–279. doi:10.20314/als.80c951f265. ISSN 0004-9697.
• Cosgrove, Bryony (2012). "The Creation of Rachel Henning: Personal Correspondence to Publishing Phenomenon". Australian Literary Studies. 27 (3): 79–91. ISSN 0004-9697. EBSCOhost 108777268.
• Hamilton, Paula; Jones, Dorothy (1986). "'Watering Geraniums and Feeding Dogs': The Letters of Rachel Henning". Journal of Australian Studies. 10 (19): 84–95. doi:10.1080/14443058609386933. ISSN 1444-3058.
• Jones, Dorothy (2001). "Rachel Henning". In Samuels, Selina (ed.). Australian Literature, 1788–1914. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 230. Detroit: Gale. pp. 188–192. ISBN 978-0-7876-4647-9. Gale TWYBUZ254744548.
• Lear, Anne (1998). "Place and Identity in the Letters of Rachel Henning". Spirit of Place: Source of the Sacred?. Australian International Religion, Literature and the Arts Conference Proceedings. pp. 159–166. ISSN 1444-5158. Archived from the original on 11 January 2026. Retrieved 27 December 2025.
• Lear, Anne (2001). "Spot the Lady: Rachel Henning Finds Herself in the Bush". Women's Writing. 8 (3): 391–402. doi:10.1080/09699080100200144. ISSN 0969-9082.

Further reading

• The Letters of Rachel Henning at Project Gutenberg Australia