Louisa Alice Baker

Kirstine Moffat (University of Waikato)
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Louisa Alice Baker was the first professional New Zealand woman novelist, publishing seventeen books between 1894 and 1913. Most of her fiction was set in the New Zealand she lived in from the ages of 7 to 38, but all of her novels were published in Britain and America where there was an appetite for colonial settings and where her preoccupation with marriage drew comparisons with Olive Schreiner and Sarah Grand. Her choice of the pseudonym “Alien” speaks of her sense of dislocation from her New Zealand home and points to a moral feminist message that challenged patriarchal hierarchies.

Born on 13 January 1856 in the Warwickshire town of Aston in England, Louisa was the second of five children born to Elizabeth (née Bratt) and Henry Joseph Dawson. A carpenter by trade, Henry Dawson

3359 words

Citation: Moffat, Kirstine. "Louisa Alice Baker". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 October 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12327, accessed 28 March 2024.]

12327 Louisa Alice Baker 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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