Alice Jane Muskett

Alice Jane Muskett (28 April 1869 – 17 July 1936) was an Australian-born artist and author. It is believed her picture of puritans accompanying her poem The Pillory was the first illustration by a woman to be published in The Bulletin.

Early life and education Alice Jane Muskett, born in Fitzroy, Victoria,

Phoebe maintained the family business after her husband's death in 1873 until 1885, when she took Alice to join Philip in Sydney. The Muskett siblings lived together on Elizabeth Street until Philip's death in 1909.

Career as an artist Muskett exhibited each year from 1890, first with the Art Society of New South Wales and then from 1895 with the Society of Artists, Sydney, her paintings reproduced in its catalogues.

David Henry Souter, founder and president of the Society of Artists, Sydney, referred to Alice Muskett as "probably the most talented of our women painters" in 1909.

She shared a studio with Florence Rodway in Sydney in the years immediately prior to World War 1, involved in the Society of Women Painters.

Career as a writer After Muskett's career as an artist had been established she began writing verse and short stories published in a range of newspapers in particular, The Sydney Mail, The Lone Hand and The Bulletin.

Using the pseudonym, 'Jane Laker', her maternal grandmother's name, she wrote a semi-autobiographical feminist novel set in Sydney in 1913, Among the Reeds (1933). It took the form of an intimate journal by a fictitious diarist over the period of the year. Dramatising women's conflicts over marriage and career, it is notable for being an early feminist piece of writing.