Catherine Baker (23 April 1861 – 7 September 1953) was an Irish-born Australian teacher best known for championing the work of her friend Joseph Furphy, whose novel Such Is Life had received an indifferent reception upon its initial publication in 1909 but was later embraced by critics and the public. Miles Franklin incorporated Baker's recollections into the essay "Who Was Joseph Furphy?", which won the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize in 1939. Baker was appointed an OBE in 1937 for her efforts in promoting Furphy's work and to broader Australian literature. She was an influential part of the Australian literary scene, supporting, writing to and encouraging writers such as Ada Cambridge, Victor Kennedy, Edith Coleman, the poet Marie E. J. Pitt, journalist Alice Henry and the poet John Shaw Neilson. She was made a life member of the Henry Lawson Society, and honoured with a bronze plaque by the society in 1936. Shortly before her death in 1953 she was made vice-president of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties.
Early life and career Baker was born on 23 April 1861 in Cappoquin, Ireland, to Catherine Baker () and Francis Wilson Baker, a heraldic painter. Her father died when Baker was only 3 months old, and the family subsequently moved to Williamstown, Victoria, in 1870 to live with Catherine's sister, who was the wife of the then mayor, Edward Crane. Baker attended Williamstown North State school, and in 1881 she became a teacher at Hyde Street State school in Footscray. Later, in 1886 she taught at a school at Wanalta Creek near Rushworth.
Meeting and correspondence with Joseph Furphy
Whilst teaching at Wanalta school she boarded at the home of the parents of pupil Isaac Furphy, before the next year moving to board with the parents of Joseph Furphy in Burramboot East. Before leaving her lodgings to move to Melbourne, Baker was delayed for three days due to weather. Joseph Furphy, who had been working outdoors, returned home for several days, and the two met. The encounter made a lasting impression on Baker, who later recalled to reporter J. K. Ewers that Furphy "had much the same style in speaking as in writing, discursive, breaking into side issues, but ever returning to the main topic", and that "at the time of meeting him I compared him in my mind to the gentle scholar in Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. Later, knowing him more perfectly, I likened him to Leonardo da Vinci...".
After moving back to Melbourne to teach at her old school in North Williamstown Baker began a correspondence with him, encouraging him to write a book about his life. Furphy valued Baker's input and encouragement; biographer John Barnes described Baker as "providing the intellectual companionship [Furphy] had never known with his wife", from whom he was estranged. Baker became friends with Joseph's sister Annie, and through this relationship Baker invited Joseph to visit her, which he did around 1887. Despite the presence of Annie, the relationship between Baker and Furphy caused suspicions within his family, and Joseph's brother John effectively prevented Furphy from visiting Baker the following year.
Furphy and Baker's remained in frequent correspondence, and at some point he resumed annual visits to Melbourne to see them until the end of 1903 when he moved across the country to Swanbourne, near in Perth. Baker had been teaching at her old school in North Williamstown from 1887 to 1898, after which she continued as an infants teacher.
Publication of Such Is Life In 1889, after much encouragement by Baker and his friend and fellow blacksmith, William Cathels, Furphy submitted his work Such Is Life to The Bulletin under the pseudonym Tom Collins. The hand-written manuscript submitted was 1,200 pages (which would have been about 550 printed pages) and, despite a positive review, literary editor A. G. Stephens determined it could not be published due to its length. An abridged version was published in 1903 to disappointing sales, but a section that had been excised enjoyed greater success serialised in the Barrier Truth between 1905 and 1907 under the title Rigby's Romance.
Furphy's standard bearer After Furphy died in 1912, Baker had a nervous breakdown and retired from the then Victorian Department of Education. In 1913 she collected and published The Poems of Joseph Furphy via the Lothian Book Publishing Company, financing the publication from her own funds., citing correspondence between Kate Baker and the Lothian Book Publishing Company 1916–1917 MS 6026. Lothian papers Box 5 Folder 5 A In 1914, after part the original edition of Such Is Life was found at The Bulletin under some lumber, she purchased the remaining 825 unbound copies of the novel for £60 and began arranging to have it republished by The Specialty Press as a second edition with a preface by Vance Palmer.
Between 1915 and 1918, Baker recommenced teaching at a number of country schools and would occasionally tutor students, despite an accelerated loss of hearing. In 1917, the second edition, re-edited by noted writer Vance Palmer, was released. Like the first edition, the second met with lackluster sales, possibly due to bookseller Angus & Robertson's declined of distribution rights. A review in The Socialist by William John Miles appearing some five years after the edition's release was pointed about the lack of publicity around the work."If the business faults of others are not the cause of Furphy's lack of wide appreciation as a writer, I can only assume his work is too good for the Australian reading public" Palmer responded to Miles's criticisms in an open letter, which he concluded by noting that "probably Joseph Furphy's work would have been left for some antiquarian in the Mitchell Library to unearth if it had not been for the enlightened energy of Miss Kate Baker" and that "not all writers are lucky enough to have such a devoted friend to act as their literary trustee."
By 1921 Baker had located and purchased Rigby's Romance in the files of the Barrier Truth and entered it into the C. J. De Garis Publishing House's Australian Novel Competition, who awarded it an Honourable Mention, and decided to publish it. The edition came with an introduction from A. G. Stevens, who had originally positively reviewed but declined to publish Such Is Life until the section that formed Rigby’s Romance was excised. In his introduction, he described Baker as "Furphy's standard-bearer"., citing Miles Franklin later requoted the phrase, adding the word "gallant".
In November 1929, J. K. Ewers wrote a series of articles about Australian authors entitled "Pioneers of the Pen", his piece on Furphy reached Baker and she struck up a correspondence with him. With Ewers she found a powerful ally, and in his autobiography Long Enough for a Joke he admits he became "willingly the slave of Kate Baker in the service of Joseph Furphy", citing In 1931 Baker campaigned to establish a plaque on the site of the house where Furphy grew up, which was by then the Yarra Glen primary school. Her campaign was successful and in 1934 the plaque was unveiled at a ceremony accompanied by Furphy's sister Annie Stewart and a number of dignitaries, including the Speaker of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, William Hugh Everard. Baker also donated a blackwood cabinet containing Furphy's works and various tributes and messages.
In March 1937 an abridged version of Such as Life was published in London by Jonathan Cape, and almost immediately met with a storm of criticism in Australia. Vance Palmer had agreed to edit the novel, however—though his name was prominent on the cover of the work-it was in fact edited largely by his wife Nettie Palmer assisted by their daughter Aileen. The most vociferous critic was P. R. "Inky" Stephenson, who wrote that "this edition howls to heaven to be withdrawn. It must be flung into the discard, and Vance Palmer with it, unless he publicly admits the enormity of his blunder"., citing . Miles Franklin was no less cutting, writing in The Bulletin that "the cover is a nice blue, the dust jacket in mourning hue ― appropriately, I feel". Amongst her criticisms was the removal of the ironic use of parentheticals whenever a swear-word was mentioned, which was a comic technique used by Furphy that poked fun at the censors of the time; the removal of references easily understood by Australians but which might not have been clear to an English audience; and what seemed a lack of understanding of Australian humour of the time, heavily used in Furphy's work. She wrote that "if such 'editing' of this nobly indigenous work was the only way to gain English attention for it, then our very feeble stature as colonial writers is painfully exposed."
This placed Baker in an awkward position. She had approved, as literary executor, the abridged version. Baker had known that it would be difficult to have the work published as she had already attempted to have Such Is Life published by Australian publisher Angus & Robertson, but this had failed. She found interest from English publisher Jonathan Cape however, and after discussions she agreed to allow Vance Palmer to abridge the novel. In a telegram to Cape, she wrote that she was confident it would allow the work to "stand out as an Australian classic [Kate Baker's emphasis]', and that '[Palmer's] cutting will neither emasculate the work nor devitalize it"., citing Kate Baker, letter to W. G. Cousins, 15 March 1936, Collection 3, Angus and Robertson Archives. She found, however, that the abridgement was not what she had expected. Despite her friendship with the Palmers, she wrote to The Bulletin on 9 June 1937 that she had told the publishers that "I am pleased with the book's format ― its paper, the printing, the binding; the editor has certainly kept the continuity of the story, and has written a plain, unvarnished tale that will no doubt be pleasing to the British public; but it is Joseph Furphy's Such Is Life." She further wrote that "I hope the book will sell well in England. I fear Australian connoisseurs will resent it fiercely."
Further contributions to Australian literature
Baker was highly regarded by many notable figures in Australian literature, and regularly wrote to Australian authors. She counted as her long time friend Robert Samuel Ross, lamenting his death after an unbroken friendship of 30 years in a letter to the Labor Call. Her autograph book, now held in the manuscripts section of the State Library of Victoria, includes signatures from many notable authors of the day, including Bernard O'Dowd, Marie Pitt, Frank Dalby Davison, Edward Harrington, Mary Gilmore, and Bertha Lawson (the widow of Henry Lawson). She wrote extensively to many Australian authors – in 1931, for instance, she wrote to Arthur Upfield expressing her appreciation for his novel The Beach of Atonement. A collection of her letters is currently held at the National Library of Australia and includes letters to J. S. Neilson, Guy Innes, Vance and Nettie Palmer, Miles Franklin and J. K. Ewers. J. S. Neilson met Baker in 1929 and credited Baker as introducing him to many Melbourne writers. In their coronation biographies for OBE recipients, The West Australian credited her with being "largely responsible for the publication of [his] poems".