Catherine Gasquoine Hartley
Hartley Catherine Gasquoine
Hartley Catherine Gasquoine (1867 1928), an eminent author, journalist and teacher, was born in Antananarivo (Madagascar). She was schooled privately and had no formal education till she was 16. Her first job was teaching. and in 1894 she became headmistress at Babington House School in Kent (England). She continued in this position till 1903 when she left Kent and settled in London, starting her career as a writer. After the failure of her first creation, a novel, she turned to non-fiction and became a prolific journalist, writing for the New Age, Art Journal, Connoisseur, English Review and Daily Express. Her books are on art, Spanish culture and society, feminist issues, sexuality, and children. Her first marriage was to Walter M Gallichan and the second to Arthur D Lewis; that was how she first wrote under the pseudonym of Mrs Walter M Gallichan and later as Mrs Arthur D Lewis.
Heavily influenced by the writings of Lewis Henry Morgan, the present work, out in 1914, brings out the contrast of women's position in present-day patriarchal societies with that in the matriarchal societies of the past.
Hartley's major works include Pictures in the Tate Gallery (1904), A Record of Spanish Painting (1904), Velazquez
(1907), El Greco (1908), Cathedrals of Southern Spain (1913), The Truth about Woman (1913), Motherhood and the Relationship of the Sexes (1916), Sexual Education and National Health (1920), Divorce Today and Tomorrow (1920), Mind of the Naughty Child (1923), and Women, Children, Love and Marriage (1924).