Ethel Turner was the author of some of Australias best-selling childrens novels including Seven Little Australians and The Cub. She kept diaries for 62 years, recording the details of her full and eventual life.
Many of her early stories first appeared in The Bulletin. Here, her granddaughter, Philippa Poole, has selected the most interesting sequence of events from the authors diaries, from 1889, at the start of her outstanding literary career, to 1930, when with the tragic death of her daughter, Jean, she ceased writing childrens books altogether. Candid and imaginative in life as well as in literature, Ethel Turners diaries bring her Sydney life in the 1900s into attractive perspective, describing Government House balls and garden parties, and generous gifts bought from the financial success of her books.
