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Cambridge, Ada (1844 - 1926)

Born
21 November 1844
Died
19 July 1926

Summary

Cambridge was born in Norfolk, England, where she received an Anglican education at home. In 1870 she married a minister, George Cross, and soon afterwards emigrated to Melbourne. She began to write primarily to supplement her family's income. Her first novel, Up the Murray, was serialised in the Australasian in 1875 and 20 others followed, her works typically appearing as serials in Australian newspapers before being published in book form locally - often by Melville, Mullen and Slade in Melbourne - and in Britain and the United States by a wide range of publishers including Hutchinson, Methuen, Heineman and Appleton. Many of her novels were social dramas and romances, with those set among the genteel upper classes of colonial Australia, like A Marked Man (1890) and The Three Miss Kings (1891), regarded as her most popular. In 1909 Cambridge went back to England with her husband, but returned to Victoria after his death in 1917.

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