Raised in Norfolk and educated at home by a series of governesses and her own insatiable reading, Cambridge published her first poetry in 1865. In 1870, she married George Frederick Cross, a curate, and later that year moved to Australia. Over the next decades, they would move to a variety of Australian towns where Cross would perform his parish duties. For a number of years, Cambridge wrote under the name of Ada Cross, but she is best-known today by her maiden name. In 1875, she published The Manor House: and Other Poems which established her as Australia's first female poet. Today she is best remembered for her novels. She became the first president of the Womens Writers Club. Her first novel, Up the Murray, also appeared in 1875 as a serial in Australasian magazine. Her first true success, however, came in 1890 with A Marked Man. She returned to England in 1913, but when her husband died in 1917, she returned to Australia. Her other works include My Guardian (1877), A Mere Chance (1882), Not All in Vain (1892), Fidelis (1895), The Devastators (1901), Thirty Years in Australia (1903), Sisters (1904), A Happy Marriage (1906), The Retrospect (1912) and The Making of Rachel Horne (1914). |
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