Emily Manning pursued active and successful careers as both journalist and poet in nineteenth-cen tury London and Sydney, publishing either anonymously or under the pseudonym "Australie." Her poetry is characterized by its lyrical and detailed descriptions of the Australian landscape, its intellectual ambition, and its formal sophistication. Although constandy returning to religious themes such as trust in God, self-sacrifice, and resignation to struggle, her poetry explores through the topos of "pain" the cultural anxieties and difficulties that informed Victorian colonial life, extending its range from conventional religious poetry to encompass questions relating to the colonial process and the nature of colonial society, its material practices, its gendered division of roles, and its aesthetic and spiritual values. Together with her accomplished use of a variety of poetic forms, including the dramatic long poem, the cantata, the short lyric, and the hymn, the intellectual weight of her poetry marks Emily Manning as a major nineteenth-century Australian poet. Born in Sydney on 12 May 1845 to the lawyer and politician Sir William Manning and his first wife, Emily Anne (nde Wise), Emily Manning's early life was characterized by privilege. Her father supplemented his income as magistrate, member of parliament, and barrister with the income from extensive property holdings, and the family lived from 1860 at the Edgecliff mansion Wallaroy. Emily's mother died 16 November 1846, eighteen months after her daughter's birth, and the child was brought up by her father's second wife, Eliza Anne (nee Sowerby), from June 1849. Emily Man ning was