Marie Lion

Marie Lion was a French writer living in Australia in the early twentieth century who published under the pen name Noel Aimir. Her novel The Black Pearl, written in French and issued in Melbourne in 1911 in Maude Wholohan's English translation, follows a Parisian orphan sent to a sheep station in South Australia and traces her path through colonial society toward Theosophy and the teachings of Annie Besant, with a dedication to the Adelaide philanthropist Joanna Barr Smith. Beyond the book itself little is recorded of her life, but it is a rare instance of Edwardian Australia described from a French point of view and with an openly spiritual purpose.