TASMA (Jesse Couvreur). Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill. An Australian novel. London, Trübner & Co., 1889. In-8, green cloth, gilt titles to spine, lettering and design in black to cover, yellow endpapers, 348 pp.; very good copy, rubbing to spine extremities and corners, white spots to spine, owner’s inscription on decorative first title page
First edition in book form after its initial serialization in The Australasian in 1888. With a signed dedication by the author. Jessie Catherine Couvreur (1848–1897), known by her pseudonym Tasma, was an Australian journalist and novelist. The daughter of a Dutch father and an Anglo-French mother, she spent her formative years in Hobart. After an unhappy first marriage, she moved to Europe, where she lived independently, delivering lectures on Australian life and contributing to various publications. In 1883, she returned to Australia to divorce her first husband before marrying Auguste Couvreur, a progressive Belgian politician and journalist who founded the first municipal girls’ school for secondary education in Brussel. Known in the artistic and progressive circles of the Belgian capital as “Madame Jessie Tasma,” she achieved literary acclaim with her debut novel, Uncle Piper of Piper’s Hill, and authored five more works, each exploring the struggles of women in abusive marriages.
