Authors by year of birth
The son of a prominent Bath (England) brewer, George Darrell first arrived in Australia around 1865 after having run away from home whilst in his teens. After a brief period of time in Melbourne he...
Dramatist, librettist, journalist.
OVERVIEW
The most popular, and arguably the most successful, writer for the Australian stage during the 1870s and 1880s, Garnet Walch's...
Ada Cambridge was born at St Germans, Norfolk, England, in 1844. She was educated by a series of governesses and also read widely. In 1865 she published two small works: Hymns on the Litany and Two...
Novelist, playwright, journalist, author.
OVERVIEW
One of the most successful writers in Australia during the last half of the nineteenth century and author of His Natural...
Barbara Baynton was the seventh child of Elizabeth (nee Ewart) and John Lawrence. Her claim that she was illegitimate had its origins in the long de facto relationship her mother had with Robert...
Mary Gaunt was born and grew up in Chiltern, Victoria. She was one of the first two women admitted to the University of Melbourne, but did not complete her degree.
From the late 1880s on...
Sometimes referred to as 'Harry' by the public, journalists and even himself, Henry Lawson appears to have only used the pen name 'Arry for the three Hean's Essence poems published as part of a 1918...
'Henry Handel Richardson' was the pseudonym for Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson. She was born in Melbourne in 1870, the daughter of Walter and Mary Richardson who had migrated from England in the...
Ethel Turner was the second child of Bennett George Burwell, commercial traveller, and his wife Sarah Jane. Burwell died when Ethel was a baby and her mother remarried. Ethel and her elder sister...
Miles Franklin was born in 1879 near Tumut, New South Wales. A fifth-generation Australian, Franklin grew up on grazing properties run by her family in the Monaro region. A decline in profits and the...
Norman Lindsay was born in 1879 at Creswick, Victoria. He was educated at local schools, but, at sixteen, he joined his brother, Lionel, in Melbourne. Here he worked as a journalistic artist and...
Ferguson was the second of seven children born to Scottish shearer and boundary rider, William Ferguson and his Aboriginal wife Emily, nee Ford. Ferguson worked in shearing sheds in the Riverina from...
Hall was an English novelist and poet who wrote eight novels including the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness, banned in Australia in 1929. Radclyffe is included in AustLit because his work was...
Katharine Susannah Prichard submitted Coonardoo as an entry in the Bulletin Prize Story Competition, 1928, under this name.(Bulletin 4 July 1928, p.22)Katharine Susannah Prichard was born in Levuka,...
Martin à Beckett Boyd was born at Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1893, when his family were on their way home to Australia after one of their periodic trips to England and Europe. His parents, Arthur...
Jean Devanny was born at Ferntown, New Zealand, the daughter of a miner. She married Francis Devanny at seventeen and soon had three children. Through reading groups, she became familiar with Marxist...
Joan Lindsay grew up in her birthplace of East St Kilda in Victoria. Her father was Sir Theyre Weigall, while her mother, Annie Sophie Henrietta (aka A. S. H. Weigall, q.v.), was the daughter of the...
Marjorie Barnard was born and educated in Sydney, graduating from the University of Sydney in 1920 with first-class honours in history. While at university, she met Flora Eldershaw, with whom she...
Eleanor Dark was born Eleanor O'Reilly at Burwood in Sydney in 1901, the only daughter of writer Dowell O'Reilly (q.v.). She was educated at a number of Sydney schools, including Redlands, but did...
In his article 'Some Facts about a Long Fiction: The Publication of Capricornia', Southerly 41.1 (1981): 82-104, Craig Munro notes that Xavier Herbert used the name 'Herbert Astor' for his stories in...
Kenneth Slessor's family moved from Orange to Sydney in 1903. Slessor was a voracious reader and began writing poetry as a child. He was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore...
Born in Sydney, Christina Stead graduated from Sydney Teachers College in 1921 and taught for several years, but resigned in 1924 to work in an office and save for a fare to London. She left...
Born in Dubbo, Lennie Lower moved with his mother to Sydney after she separated from Lower's alcoholic father. After attending Darlinghurst Public School, Lower served in the army and the navy during...
Betty Roland left school at sixteen to pursue a career in journalism, working for Table Talk and Sun News-Pictorial. Roland married Ellis Harvey Davies in 1923, but ten years later she eloped with...
Leslie Rees was educated at Subiaco Primary School, Perth Modern College and the University of Western Australia (1924-1929). While at the University of Western Australia, he edited the student...
The son of a Presbyterian Minister, A. D. Hope was educated at home and at schools in Tasmania and New South Wales before matriculating to Sydney University where he studied English and philosophy....
Eve Langley was born at Forbes, New South Wales, in 1908. She was educated in Forbes and later worked at several jobs in Melbourne before accompanying her sister, June, as an itinerant farm labourer...
George Johnston was born in Melbourne and educated at state schools before becoming an apprentice lithographer. Several articles on sailing ships secured him a job as a journalist for the Argus, but...
Paddy Roe grew up on Roebuck Plains Station east of Broome, Western Australia. He is of Nyikina descent and grew up between two worlds working as a stockman, a windmill repairer, a butcher and in an...
Patrick White is the first Australian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (1973). He was born into a wealthy Australian grazing family with strong ties to England, and received his...
Kenneth Mackenzie was the grandson of George Paterson, a member of Alexander Forrest's [1879] Kimberley expedition. He was named Kenneth Ivo Brownley Langwell by his overbearing father, Hugh. His...
Bill Neidjie was born at Alawanydajawany along the East Alligator River. His father was Nadampala and his mother Lucy Wirlmaka from the Ulbuk clan of the Amurrak people. He spent most of his...
David Campbell was born at Ellerslie station, near Adelong, New South Wales. He was educated at home, at a preparatory school and at The King's School in Sydney before entering Jesus College,...
