Vale Lynne Spender

Feminist writer and legal advocate Lynne Spender has died, aged 77.

Spinifex Press director Susan Hawthorne writes:

I met Lynne Spender in 1987 through my role as an editor at Penguin Books and the in-house editor for the Penguin Australian Women’s Library, which was initiated by Dale Spender. Lynne edited Her Selection: Writings by Nineteenth-Century Women, published in 1988. It includes 13 writers born between 1805 and 1861. As Lynne notes in her introduction:

But Australian life was not all boys and bush. From the very beginnings of white invasion of the Australian continent, a considerable proportion of the population lived in ‘cities’ and dealt with issues way beyond those which were raised by conquering the bush—and its original inhabitants.

Lynne was more than aware of the nature of women’s experience in Australia, both Indigenous and white. At the time of this book, she was working as an editor for Redfern Legal Centre Publishing. She had already published two previous books, Intruders on the Rights of Men (1983), and Scribbling Sisters (1986), co-written with her sister Dale.

Lynne’s background was initially as a schoolteacher of English, where she would have a profound effect on two future writers, Kathy Lette and Debra Adelaide, mentoring and encouraging them. Returning to Australia after some years of living in Canada, Lynne did an MA in women’s studies and a law degree. She wrote books that drew on her knowledge of the law and women’s relationships with men, including Law and Relationships (1991) and What Every Woman Should Know About Her Partner’s Money (1994). Other areas she wrote about included pets, legal rights for writers, human rights and mental health rights.

I had a lot to do with Lynne when she was CEO of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA), which was important in keeping those of us in the publishing industry informed about new digital communications. Her PhD in this area was published in 2009, Digital Culture, Copyright Maximalism and the Challenge to Copyright Law. Her work influenced many in the book industry, and she was also executive director of the Australian Society of Authors in the 1990s and a board director from 2010 to 2014.

Lynne was a keen swimmer and a regular at the McIver Ladies Baths near her home in Coogee. In 2021, she came to Spinifex with an almost finished manuscript of The Women’s Pool, which was published in the Australian summer of 2021–2022, marking the 100th anniversary of women’s guardianship of the pool—a beautiful book of essays by 23 women recalling the importance of this space for women.

Lynne’s life and words, her knowledge of law, her sheer joy in life have made many lives better. We at Spinifex Press will miss her, as will many others whose lives have been touched by her.

Category: Obituaries