- Born
- 27 March 1851
Bromelton, Queensland, Australia - Died
- 10 April 1935
Torquay, England - Alternative Names
- Praed, Mrs Campbell
Summary
Rosa Praed was born at Bromelton in Queensland, where she grew up on her family's extensive country properties. She married Arthur Campbell Praed in 1872, living on a cattle station for several years - an experience described in a later novel, The Romance of a Station (1889) - before moving with him to England. She returned to Australia only once, in 1894-95. In the meantime, she had become a celebrated London novelist. Her long literary career in fact saw her publish forty novels in fifty years, the first of which was An Australian Heroine (1880). A significant number of her novels had Australian themes and settings, including Fugitive Anne (1902) and Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land (1915). Much of her later fiction reflected her growing theosophical interests. Separated from her husband in 1897, Praed lived with Nancy Harward, a psychic medium, until Harward's death in 1927. Her final years were beset with loneliness and illness; her three sons were already dead and her daughter Maud, who was born deaf, was in an asylum.