Grace Elizabeth Jennings Carmichael

Born: 1867, Australia
Died: 1904
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Jennings Carmichael

The following is excerpted from The Dictionary of Australian Biography by Percival Searle, published in 1949 by Angus and Robertson and republished by Project Gutenberg.

CARMICHAEL, GRACE ELIZABETH JENNINGS, Mrs Francis Mullis (1868-1904), known as Jennings Carmichael, poet, daughter of Archibald Carmichael, was born at East Ballarat in 1868. She was educated at Melbourne, while still a child went to live on a station at Orbost, and grew up close to the bush she came to love so much. In 1888 she went to Melbourne to be trained as a nurse at the Children’s Hospital, and in 1891 published a small volume of prose sketches, Hospital Children. Having qualified she obtained a position on a station near Geelong, and subsequently married Francis Mullis. She contributed verse to the Australasian, and in 1895 Poems by Jennings Carmichael was published. She lived for a time in South Australia and then went to London, where she died in poor circumstances in 1904. In 1910 a small selection of her poems was published, in 1937 a plaque to her memory was unveiled at Orbost, and a year later a replica was placed in the public library at Ballarat. Two of Jennings Carmichael’s sons were present at the ceremony.
Jennings Carmichael wrote much good and pleasant verse with occasional touches of poetry. Brunton Stephens (q.v.) called Miss Carmichael the Jean Ingelow of Australia. Comparisons of this kind have little value, but it may be said that Miss Carmichael’s position in relation to the leading Australian poets, is not dissimilar to that of Miss Ingelow in comparison with Browning and Tennyson.