BAYNTON, BARBARA JANET AINSLEIGH (18621929)

daughter of Robert Laurence Kilpatrick, was born at Scone, Hunter River district, New South Wales, in 1862. In 1880 she married Hay Frater and in 1890 Dr Thomas Baynton. A few years later she began contributing short stories to theBulletinand six of these were published in 1902 under the title ofBush Studies. In 1907 appearedHuman Toll, a novel, and in 1917Cobbers, a reprint ofBush Studies, with two additional stories. During the 1914-18 war Mrs Baynton was living in England and in 1921 she married her third husband Baron Headley. She died at Melbourne on 28 May 1929. She was survived by Lord Headley, and two sons and a daughter by the first marriage.

Barbara Baynton's reputation rests on half a dozen short stories, written with much ability and power, and uncompromising in their stark realism. The building up of detail, however, is at times overdone, and lacking humorous relief, the stories tend to give a distorted view of life in the back-blocks.