Marie Bjelke Petersen

Marie Caroline Bjelke Petersen (23 December 1874 – 11 October 1969) was a Danish-Australian novelist and physical culture teacher. She wrote nine popular romance novels between 1917 and 1937. Her novels were set in Australia, mostly in rural Tasmania, and represent an alternative vision of Australia to that of earlier writers.

Marie Bjelke Petersen's biographer, Alison Alexander, wrote: "With her Danish background Marie was not steeped in the laconic lore of the bush propagated by the Bulletin and its school of admirers, and she set out to glorify her adopted land, to depict Australia as a cultured civilised place, with charming people (setting aside the villains), a quite different portrayal from that usually found in the literature of her day."

It has been claimed that her works were more popular in the United States and England than Australia.

Her brothers founded physical culture institutes which continued to function through the end of the 20th century, and her nephew, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, became the Premier of Queensland.

Life Marie Bjelke Petersen was the only daughter and second child of Georg Peter Bjelke-Petersen, a gardener and then master builder, and his wife Caroline Vilhelmine, née Hansen. (Originally plain "Petersen" Georg hyphenated his name for unknown reasons sometime in the 1860s. ) Marie went to school in Denmark, Germany and England Gardening and reading were interests that Marie Bjelke Petersen continued into her nineties. It has been argued that her book The Captive Singer is about Mills.

Career in physical culture In 1892, her brother Lt Col Hans Christian Bjelke-Petersen founded the Bjelke-Petersen Physical Culture School. (He is credited with building Australia's first squash court, shortly after World War I.) Marie was in charge of the women's section and taught there and at other schools before turning to writing in 1910 when injury meant she could no longer teach. She was also a registered massage therapist. However, it was not a commercial success, recovering £5,000 of its £10,000 production cost. The film had its critics, some regarded its primary weakness as its plot which involved a girl disguising herself as a boy. However the film was a popular success in Australia and overall the critics were friendly – another explanation was that this ambitious film fell victim to structural distribution problems facing the Australian film industry.

Her novels were distinguished by a fresh literary take on Australian life, closely observed scenery and social background and, by the standards of the romance genre, comparatively non-stereotyped characterisation and plot. Despite her conservative politics they were also notable for their celebration of Australian egalitarianism and her promotion of women's rights at a time when (and a place where) the women's movement was largely quiescent. Her novels also reflected her devout Christianity. A striking feature of her novels was their intense feeling for landscape, almost to the extent of ascribing sentience to natural features.

Her novels sold altogether around 250,000 copies in English, a phenomenal success for an Australian writer at that time. They were also translated into six languages, including Arabic.

Awards In 1935, she won the King's Jubilee medal for services to literature.