In 1872 Pearson met and married Charles Pearson on what was to have been a brief trip to the Colonies with her father - Philip Butler, an absentee landlord - and his second wife. Tregenza's biography of her husband Professor of Democracy contains numerous references to her dissatisfaction with their continued residence in Australia. She began writing, Tregenza suggests (p.183) "to relieve her loneliness and to give her life more meaning". Further, he concludes of her work that "the dreamworld she creates too often becomes a nightmare expression of her own distresses and desires".
