Adeline Janetta Whitfeld was born in Vermont, Tasmania to Alfred Whitfeld and Elizabeth Ann Whitfeld nee Fletcher. In 1905, at 42 years of age she married Francis West Chambers in Melbourne and had a son, Edward Whitfeld Chambers, two years later. She never published under her married name, Adeline Janetta Chambers. Whitfeld published her first work in 1887 under the alias Python, then from 1889 to 1893 wrote and published as A. Jamieson Wrainford. In 1894 she started publishing as Adeline J. Whitfeld with the except of a publication under A. Jamieson Wrainford in 1895. Her first work, In Tasmania Long Ago was published in the Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW) in 1887. It portrays a colonial perspective that does not look down on Indigenous people and behaviours but instead understands Indigenous retaliation on the frontiers. While she wrote in the later colonial period, her first work imagines an earlier time in Tasmania.
Whitfeld was a lesser-known writer of the colonial period, remaining on the edges of the commercial writing industry, however, she is still recognised as a notable Tasmanian author of the late 19th century and early 20th century. She wrote all her published works from the late 1880s to the early 1900s and wrote mainly children’s and regular short stories. Alongside her 22 short stories, she wrote five novels, two novellas, and two essays, 'Liberty and Equality' and 'Diphtheria'. Whitfeld’s stories were short and of educational value, often containing lessons or fictionally portraying the colonial landscape and the movement of life around her. Some of her stories discussed the recruitment of young boys as soldiers and ideas of death and heaven, as seen in 'God’s Soldier', while other stories discuss social topics, like child neglect in 'The Old Baby'. Her stories were popular with both younger and older audiences, and her children’s stories were considered pleasant and well received.
Whitfeld published largely in the 1880s and 1890s, slowing as she got older. She stopped publishing completely a few years before she married and didn’t publish again after 1901. In 1900 she published a collection of children’s tales and in 1901 she published a single short story. In 1914, two short stories from her 1900 collection, The Twilight Hour, were republished in The Daily Standard in Brisbane. These republications, 14 years after the original date of publication, show the relevance of her works across Australia in the early 1900s.
There are no records explaining why she stopped writing, so it is likely due to her move to Victoria between 1901 and 1905, where she met and married her husband, Francis West Chambers. The birth of her son two years later may have impacted on her time to write and ability to do so. Adeline Janetta Whitfeld died of unspecified causes at her home in Victoria on the 29th of December in 1924.
This biography was researched and written by Jessica Devenish.
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