Jessie Catherine Couvreur - Infinite Women

Born: 28 October 1848, United Kingdom
Died: 23 October 1897
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Tasma, Jessie Huybers

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.

COUVREUR, JESSIE CATHERINE (1848-1897), novelist, was born at Highgate, London, on 28 October 1848. Her father, Alfred James Huybers, came originally from Antwerp, and his daughter was of Dutch, French and English descent. She arrived in Tasmania with her parents in December 1852 and was educated at Hobart. In June 1867 she was married to Charles F. Fraser and went to live in Melbourne. The marriage was unfortunate, and was dissolved on the petition of the wife about 1870. In 1873 she visited Europe, and between 1879 and 1883 spent much time there giving courses of lectures in French at various European cities. She also wrote for the Nouvelle Revue and received from the French government the decoration of Officier d’Académie. She revisited Tasmania but returned in 1883 to live permanently in Europe. In 1885 she married M. Couvreur a well-known Belgian politician and publicist.
As a girl of 16 Madame Couvreur had had verses accepted by the Australian Journal, and she afterwards contributed essays and short stories to the Australasian and the Melbourne Review. Her first novel, Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill, appeared serially in the Australian Journal in 1888, and was published in London in 1889 under the pseudonym of “Tasma”. It had an immediate success and was followed by In her Earliest Youth (1890), A Sydney Sovereign and other Tales (1890), The Penance of Portia James (1891), A Knight of the White Feather (1892), Not Counting the Cost (1895), and A Fiery Ordeal (1897). Her husband died in 1894 and Madame Couvreur took up his duties as correspondent of The Times at Brussels. She proved to be “a conscientious painstaking journalist, keenly alive to all political, intellectual and social movements”. She continued to hold this position until her death on 23 October 1897.
Madame Couvreur was tall and handsome, with a highly cultivated mind. Her first book, Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill, was her best. There is not much plot, but there is excellent character-drawing and the interest is well-sustained to the end. Of her other novels In her Earliest Youth and The Penance of Portia James are possibly the best.

This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Australasian Biography: Comprising notices of eminent colonists from the inauguration of responsible government down to the present time. [1855-1892] by Phillip Mennell, F.R.G.S., published by Hutchinson & Co., 25 Paternoster Square and 1892. The text was reproduced via Project Gutenberg.

Couvreur, Jessie Catherine (“Tasma”), the well-known writer, is the daughter of Alfred James Huybers, J.P., of Hobart, Tas., and was born at Highgate, near London, being brought out as an infant by her parents to Tasmania in the early half of the fifties. Her father originally came from Antwerp to reside in England, and thence proceeded to Hobart, where the future novelist remained until her first marriage, when she went to live in Victoria, where her first story, “Barren Love” (recently republished by her in London in the collection “A Sydney Sovereign”), appeared in Mr. Garnet Walsh’s Annual of 1877. She also contributed original tales, sketches, and essays to the Australasian and the Melbourne Review. In 1879 she went to reside permanently in Europe, which she had visited a few years previously. From 1880 to 1882 she lectured in French on Australia in France and Belgium for the Geographical Society of Paris. She also wrote for Madame Adam’s Nouvelle Revue, and received from the French Government the decoration of Officier d’Académie. In 1883-4 she revisited Australia. On her return to Europe she was married in 1885 to M. Auguste Couvreur, the well-known Belgian publicist, and has resided since in Brussels. M. Couvreur, who is the senior foreign member of the Cobden Club, and has been connected with the Independence Belge both as contributor and editor, was for twenty years one of the Liberal representatives of Brussels, and for four years Vice-President of the Chamber. In 1889, under her nom-de-plume “Tasma,” Madame Couvreur published in London her first complete novel, entitled “Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill”—a story of Australian life and manners, which was most highly commended by the leading literary critics in England and on the Continent. Her second novel, “In her Earliest Youth,” published in 1890, is likewise Australian, and was equally well received by the press. About the same time “Tasma” also brought out the collection of short tales called “A Sydney Sovereign.” She has now a new one-volume novel in the press entitled “A White Feather,” and from time to time she has contributed an occasional story to Mr. Edmund Yates’s society journal, the World. Since her residence in Europe, Madame Couvreur has sent various contributions to the Melbourne Australasian, and is generally recognised, particularly in Victoria and Tasmania, as one of the leading writers, who, if not actually born, have been entirely educated in the colonies. “Tasma” contributed to Mr. Mennell’s “In Australian Wilds” (published by Hutchinson & Co.), and in Christmas 1890 a story to “Over the Sea,” a collection of stories for English and Australian children, one to the collection “Under the Gum-Tree,” and also the opening tale, “An Old Time Episode in Tasmania,” to Mrs. Patchett Martin’s “Cooëe.”