Between the writers who profess not to see anything individual in the life of Australia and those others who confine themselves to describing a few of its principal scenes and types of character, Tasma holds a middle and independent place. She is absolutely without predilections and hobbies. Her materials are chosen for some quality of picturesqueness rather than for the purpose of illustrating any phase of life at the Antipodes or elsewhere. So little are some of her novels concerned with the external appearances of the country that the scene of their action might easily be transferred to almost any part of Great Britain or America. Incidentally she has given a few strongly-sketched views of places--of Melbourne in midsummer, with its buildings of sombre bluestone and stucco, and streets swept by dust-laden hot winds; of Riverina, arid and drought-stricken; and of the peaceful beauty of rural Tasmania, the home of her own youth--but these and other descriptions from the same pen are slight compared with similar work in the stories of Kingsley, Boldrewood, and Mrs. Campbell Praed. Tasma, as one of the younger writers, has rightly seen that, for the present at all events, more than sufficient use has been made in fiction of the natural peculiarities of Australia. Her novels are, moreover, all character studies, and little dependent upon local colour for their interest. Her quiet, satirical humour and power of rapidly and mordantly sketching a portrait, do much to justify a comparison which her friends sometimes make of her writings with those of George Eliot and Jane Austen. Rolf Boldrewood, after the publication of her first three books, hailed her as the 'Australian George Eliot,' and the title is certainly more fitting than the praise implied by the other comparison. She has much of George Eliot's conscientious literary expression, direct masculine way of looking at life, and unsparing criticism of her own sex. While reminding one, as she often does, of Jane Austen's humour, Tasma does not approach any nearer to that writer's supreme gift of describing character in dialogue than scores of others who have followed the same model during the last seventy years. Like most of the chief contributors to Australian literature, Tasma is a colonist in experience only. She was born at Highgate, near London, and taken during childhood by her father, Mr. Alfred James Huybers, a Dutch merchant, to Hobart, in Tasmania, about forty years ago. She displayed literary talent at an early age, read extensively, and published criticisms in the _Melbourne Review_, and short stories and sketches in the lighter colonial periodicals.