The Penance of Portia James

Jessie Catherine Huybers (1848-1897), later Mrs. Fraser, Mrs. Couvreur was an Australian novelist. 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'Academie. 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, she 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 pseudonymn 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).