Iota

Children of Circumstance (Dodo Press) Iota

Kathleen Mannington Caffyn (nee Hunt) (1852- 1926) was an Irish-Australian novelist. She trained as a nurse and married a medical practitioner, and went with him to Sydney in 1880. She was a founder of the District Nursing Society in Victoria and served on its committee for around two years. Mrs. Caffyn contributed a story of some sixty pages to Cooee: Tales of Australian Life by Australian Ladies (1891), and wrote a novel A Yellow Aster, which was published in London in 1894 under the pseudonym of "Iota". It had an immediate success and was quickly followed by Children of Circumstance (1894), and by some 15 other volumes in the 20 years that followed. Amongst her other works are A Comedy in Spasms (1895), A Quaker Grandmother (1896), Anne Manleverer (1899) and Dorinda and Her Daughter (1910).