Dulcie Deamer

Mary Elizabeth Kathleen Dulcie Deamer (13 December 1890 – 16 August 1972) was a New Zealand-born Australian novelist, poet, journalist, and actress. She was a founder and committee member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers.

Life Deamer was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, daughter of George Edwin Deamer, a physician from Lincolnshire, and his New Zealand-born wife, Mable Reader. She was taught at home by her mother, who had been a governess. She married Albert Goldie, a theatrical agent, in Perth, Australia, on 27 August 1908. She bore six children, but separated from Goldie in 1922.

Career

In the 1920–30s Dulcie Deamer was a poet, playwright and author in Sydney, where she was Australia's first female boxing reporter.

Deamer was known as the "Queen of Bohemia" due to her involvement with Norman Lindsay's literary and artistic circle, the Bohemian world of Kings Cross, Sydney, and vaudeville. During the inter-war years, many balls were held in Sydney, including those known as the "Artists' Balls" which had been held as far back as the 1880s. Dulcie Deamer attended every Artists' Ball for 30 years.

The balls regularly made the newspapers and behaviour at the 1924 Ball, which Dulcie referred to as "The Night of the Great Scandal", resulted in the introduction of restrictions on alcohol and a greater police presence for subsequent events.

A modern critic has noted that Deamer's work "demonstrates a fascination with religion, mythology and classical literature (typical of associates such as Norman Lindsay, Rosaleen Norton and Hugh McCrae) and is characteristically ornamental in style."

Death Deamer died at the Little Sisters of the Poor, Randwick, New South Wales, aged 81. She had written an unpublished autobiography in the 1960s, later published in 1998. Her daughter, the theologian Rosemary Goldie, died at Randwick as well, three decades later.