Jeannie Gunn

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Gunn, Jeannie OBE (Pen name, Mrs Aeneas Gunn) (5 June 1870–9 June 1961) was an Australian novelist, teacher and Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) volunteer.

Jeannie Gunn was born in Carlton, Melbourne, the last of five children of Thomas Johnstone Taylor a Baptist minister who went into business and later worked on the Melbourne Argus.^[1] Matriculating through Melbourne University after being educated at home, Gunn ran a school with her sisters between 1889 and 1896, after which she worked as a visiting teacher. In 1901 she married the explorer, pastoralist and journalist Aeneas James Gunn in the Presbyterian Church. Together they travelled to Darwin (Then called 'Palmerston') and then onto an outlying station. Sadly her husband died early in 1903 and Gunn returned to live in Melbourne.

In Melbourne Jeannie Gunn began writing the books she would become famous for at the encouragement of friends. The Little Black Princess: a True Tale of life in the Never-Never Land, published in 1905 and revised in 1909, chronicled the childhood an Indigenous Australian protagonist named Bett-Bett. Gunn's second book, We of the Never-Never (1909), was styled as a novel but was acctually a recounting of her time in the Northern Territory with only the names of people change to obscure their identities. We of the Never-Never sold more than three hundred thousand copies over thirty years, was translated into German in the twenties and by 1931 its author was voted the third most popular Australian novelist after Marcus Clarke and Rolf Boldrewood in a poll by The Herald (Melbourne).

During the First World War Gunn became active in welfare work for Australian servicemen overseas.^[2] At the end of the conflict she began campaigning for the welfare of returned servicemen liaising with government departments and becoming a patron of the Monbulk RSL attending every event they organised over two decades. Although she never completed another novel she did publish further stories about the characters from her previous works.^[1] In 1939 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her writing and advocacy work.

Jeannie Gunn died at Hawthorn, in 1961. The memoirs of her work with the RSL, My Boys: A book of remembrance, was published in 2000.

[edit] Bibliography

Novels

• The Little Black Princess: a True Tale of life in the Never-Never Land (1905)
• We of the Never Never (1908)

Non-fiction

• My Boys: A Book of Remembrance (2000)

[edit] External links

• Works by Jeannie Gunn at Project Gutenberg
  • We of the Never Never at Project Gutenburg

[edit] References

Persondata
NAME	Gunn, Jeannie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Gunn, Mrs Aeneas (Pen-name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Australian novelist, teacher and Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) volunteer
DATE OF BIRTH	5 June 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH	Carlton, Victoria, Australia
DATE OF DEATH	9 June 1961
PLACE OF DEATH	Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia