Dexter, Caroline (1819–1884)

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Dexter, Caroline (1819–1884)

Australian feminist. Name variations: Caroline Lynch. Born in Nottingham, England, in 1819; died in 1884; daughter of a jeweller; educated in England and Paris, France; married William Dexter (a painter), in 1843 (died 1860); married William Lynch (a lawyer).

Caroline Dexter was born in Nottingham, England, in 1819. In 1855, age 36, she sailed for Australia to join her husband, painter William Dexter, who had immigrated there three years previous. The couple founded an art school, but when it failed they moved to Gippsland. There, Caroline wrote Ladies' Almanack: The Southern Cross or Australian Album and New Year's Gift (1857), a book sympathetic to aboriginal culture which chronicled life in Australia.

Dexter left her husband and moved to Melbourne where she campaigned for dress reform and started the Institute of Hygiene. In 1861, she joined with Harriet Clisby to found the Interpreter, a radical feminist journal. When her husband died in 1860, Dexter married a prosperous lawyer William Lynch and became a patron of artists and writers.

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