NLA image of person
Lucy Frost Lucy Frost i(A20899 works by)
Born: Established: 1941
c
United States of America (USA),
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Americas,
;
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

After receiving her BA from a Pennsylvania women's college, Lucy Frost completed an MA and PhD at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. She taught for some time at the University of California, Los Angeles, before accepting, in 1970, a position at La Trobe University, Melbourne.

Frost has made a significant contribution to women's studies in Australia with publications that have recovered the work of forgotten writers, and analysed the effect of social conventions and the environment on Australian women. Specialising in documentary history, Frost edited the letters of pioneer women for No Place for a Nervous Lady (1984), the journal of Annie Baxter Dawbin for the Academy Editions of Australian Literature and some unpublished autobiographical writing of Eve Langley for the book Wild Eve: Eve Langley's Story (1999). With Hamish Maxwell-Stewart she edited a book on convict lives, Chain Letters: Narrating Convicts Lives (2001). Frost has also published creative writing, collaborating with Marion Halligan on a travel narrative, Those Women Who Go to Hotels (1997).

In the mid 1990s, Frost took up a position at the University of Tasmania as Professor in the School of English, Journalism and European Languages.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Convict Orphans Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2023 25527122 2023 multi chapter work biography

'Many thousands of abandoned children were treated as free labour in late 19th century Australia, yet their stories have been hidden until now, even to their descendants. Lucy Frost's painstaking research has uncovered what really happened to the convict orphans.

'This moving story of thousands of cast away children is a vital part of our nation's history.' - David Hill, author of The Forgotten Children

'All families have their secrets, and a convict ancestor or an illegitimate birth were shames that families once buried deep. Among the best-hidden stories in Australia's history are those of the convict orphans.

'Agnes arrived on a convict transport aged four and was abandoned when her mother needed to escape an abusive husband. After their mother died and their father deserted them, Maria and Eliza Marriner were taken into state care too. Cut off from family, behind the walls of the imposing sandstone buildings of the Queen's Orphan Schools, they were among hundreds of young children entrusted to the much feared Matron Smyth.

'At the age of twelve, the children left the orphanage to work without pay on farms and in homes—some of them places where no child should ever have been sent. Although colonists called it white slavery, the authorities turned a blind eye to what was really happening.

'These are stories of abuse and abandonment, and also of great generosity and kindness from individuals who rescued and supported children. Some children managed to build happy lives for themselves, but many could not navigate a system stacked against them. There are disturbing parallels between the Queen's Orphan Schools in Hobart and other children's institutions in Australia into the 21st century.' (Publication summary) 

2024 longlisted Dick and Joan Green Family Award for Tasmanian History
y separately published work icon Chain Letters : Narrating Convict Lives Carlton South : Melbourne University Press , 2001 Z974308 2001 anthology criticism correspondence

'This is the first book to apply new academic understandings of the convict transportation system to explore the lives of individual convicts. In searching for the convict voice, each chapter is a detective story in miniature, either an exercise in discovering the identity behind a particular account or a piecing together of a convict life from the scattered fragments of a tale. Many issues of great contemporary interest arise from these stories, including the multicultural nature of Australian colonial society and, above all, the importance of love and hope.' (Publication summary)

2004 Inaugural winner The Australian Historical Association Awards Kay Daniels Award
Last amended 11 Apr 2018 16:55:38
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