Mademoiselle Marie St Denis was an actress who worked in various Australian colonies. Her suicide in 1868 was widely (and, at times, sensationally) reported in colonial newspapers. According to some of the reports, St Denis had literary pretensions and had submitted her writing to journals in Melbourne but had not met with any success.
St Denis was buried at the Melbourne General Cemetery on 25 October 1868; her gravesite was moved several days later. Newspaper reports of the day indicated that St Denis had requested an inscription on her headstone: 'One who loved not wisely, but too well' (from Shakespeare's Othello). It is not clear if this request was fulfilled. St Denis's birth name (Alice Maes) does appear on a later headstone that includes her mother, sister, brother, neice and nephew.
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