Louisa Lawson established The Dawn in Sydney in 1888 and continued as editor and publisher until illness forced her to close in 1905. In the first editorial, writing as Dora Falconer, she outlined her vision for The Dawn as a 'phonograph to wind out audibly the whispers, pleadings, and demands of the sisterhood.' Editorials sourced elsewhere replaced her contributions when Lawson was ill and when she was injured in a tram accident. The final editorial is written by an uncredited third party. Nothing could have contrasted more with the optimistic and militant tone of the first editorial than this bitter final piece.
In an eclectic mix of the domestic and the global, the content of The Dawn covers a wide spectrum of subject matter from women's suffrage to gardening to children's stories 'for nothing concerning woman's life and interest lies outside our scope'. Each issue features a Poetry Page, at least one short story, children's fiction and instructional columns on news, fashion, food and gardening. The Dawn was primarily a vehicle for the dissemination of Lawson's political and social agendas and her own literary output as well as that of her son Henry and her daughter Gertrude. Articles, women's news, and stories reprinted from other sources reflect Lawson's global outlook and wide reading range. Pieces from the Boston Globe, Collier's Weekly, and Harper's Bazar are interspersed amongst uncredited Australian and international works. In early volumes uncredited literary works were marked "Selection" whilst submitted works were marked "Original".
Correspondence shows that its readership was spread throughout the eastern states at a price of three shillings per year. Some issues bear the annotation "Registered as a Newspaper" and "For Transmission Abroad" under the banner.
