She was a feminist, passionate recorder of West Australian history and a leading local nurse.

Her uncle was one of the early premiers and she collaborated on a book with DH Lawrence — but today the name Mollie Skinner is virtually unknown.

Perth writer and performer Susie Conte has now created a one-woman play that she hopes will revive interest in Skinner's life story.

"As a woman, I like women's stories; and we run a women's theatre company, so the idea was to find forgotten women and bring their stories back to life," Ms Conte said.

"Everything that was written about her was in relation to DH Lawrence.

"When I started researching her I found this really interesting, brave, complicated, vulnerable woman."

An education lost to near blindness

Life was difficult for Mary Louisa Skinner after her birth in the fledgling Swan River colony in 1876.

She was born with a cleft lip and went through numerous operations as a child to correct it.

The family returned to England when Skinner was nine and she was sent to boarding school in Edinburgh — but her education ended abruptly not long after.

"She got ulcerated corneas at the age of 11 and she was literally put into a darkened room for five years," Ms Conte said.

"They used to give them cocaine drops and we now know they scar the eyes.

"When she recovered at 16 she had some sight but had lost her education."

Susie Conte wants people to rediscover WA writer Mollie Skinner. ( Supplied: Kathy Wheatley, Edith Cowan University )

It was this experience that inspired Skinner to write, Ms Conte said.

"She has this beautiful poetic turn of phrase, and she used to say she thought her style was due to her lack of education, but I think it's what makes her unique."

Despite her family's middle-class position, Skinner was not free to pursue a writing career full time.

Instead she trained as a nurse in London and wrote for the Daily Mail on the side.

Taking over the family

In 1900, when Skinner was 24, she returned to Perth.

There, her uncle George Leake was the premier.

"Her father died when she was in her 20s, she lost her financial security and she had to work as a nurse to make ends meet," Ms Conte said.

"Even though they were living on St Georges Terrace, her brothers were lazy and gamblers and debt-ridden, so she was the one who stepped up and took over the family."

Skinner continued writing for newspapers as well as working as a nurse, and in 1912 she wrote a successful textbook called Midwifery Made Easy.

DH Lawrence made a short stopover in Perth in 1922 that proved serendipitous. ( Supplied: Wikimedia Commons )

DH Lawrence and Mollie Skinner struck up a prolific correspondence. ( Supplied: State Library of WA )

Chance meeting with a famous author

Then Skinner's luck changed thanks to a chance encounter with English novelist DH Lawrence.

In 1922 he stopped in Perth on his way from India to Sydney and stayed at the guesthouse Skinner was running in the Perth Hills.

"And they just bonded over socks," Ms Conte said.

"She was out doing the washing, and he liked to do his own washing too, and they started talking around the wash house.

"They made a really interesting connection, talking about writing and how they saw the world and love of land and poetry."

Lawrence encouraged Skinner to write more about the life she knew, the landscape of the South-West and the stories of the early colonial settlers of Perth.

"She said: 'I can't do that, who would publish it?' And he said: 'Leave it to me'," Ms Conte said.

"From then on, they started this great correspondence and he encouraged her at every turn, gave her pointers."

A published novel

The first edition of the The Boy In The Bush. ( Supplied: Wikimedia Commons )

Skinner wrote a novel, The House Of Ellis, which Lawrence reworked and retitled The Boy In The Bush.

It was published in 1924 under both their names.

"He rewrote it but always made sure she got royalties," Ms Conte said.

They continued to write to each other until Lawrence's death in 1930.

"He had a lot of time for her, even though he was dying of tuberculosis and had his own way of living life and travelling all over the world and writing his own novels," Ms Conte said.

Skinner continued to write but never reached the same heights of success again and died in 1955.

"I think she was a minor celebrity at the time, alongside Mary Durack and Katharine Susannah Prichard , and those women have gone on to become icons of WA literature — but not Mollie," Ms Conte said.

Susie Conte's play, Sparrow, is at the Subiaco Arts Centre from May 2 to 5.