Maybanke Anderson

Maybanke Anderson also known as Maybanke Wolstenholme (17 February 1845 – 15 April 1927) was a Sydney reformer involved in women's suffrage and federation.

Maybanke Anderson (née Selfe) was born at Kingston upon Thames, near the city London. Her family migrated to Australia as free settlers when she was nine years old. Twelve years later in September 1867 she married Edmund Kay Wolstenholme, a timber merchant. The couple had seven children between 1868 and 1879, four of them died from a heart condition before the age of five. Her son, Harry Wolstenholme, was a lawyer and keen amateur ornithologist. The Wolstenholmes built a large house called 'Maybanke' in Marrickville. The later years of the marriage were unhappy; Edmund had a number of business failures and became an alcoholic, leaving the family in 1884. Maybanke had to wait for the passage of the Divorce Amendment and Extension Act in 1892 before she could divorce Edmund on the grounds of "three years of desertion." The divorce was finalised in 1893. After the divorce, she was supported financially by her brother, the renowned engineer Norman Selfe, with whom she would later campaign for education reform.

In 1885 Maybanke opened Maybanke School, a girls' school that she operated in her home preparing girls for the University of Sydney entrance examination. Operating for 10 years, the school was later known as Maybanke College.

Following her divorce, Maybanke took an active role in the promotion of women and children's rights. She became active in the women's suffrage movement; she believed that the vote was 'the kernel for all reform'. She was vice president of the Women's Literary Society started by her friend Rose Scott. Many of the society's members would go on to form the Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales (WSL) on 6 May 1891. In 1893 she was elected to the WSL presidency, and founded the Australasian Home Reading Union in the same year. The Union was a program to promote induction by organising small study groups in rural areas.

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