Atha Westbury

Born James Bleasby on 5 May 1838, the writer known as Atha Westbury—also published as Atha and Frank Atha Westbury—became a popular and remarkably productive author in Australia and New Zealand. He is remembered for mystery and adventure fiction, children's stories, and verse, and for writing in a way that appealed to a broad newspaper-reading audience.

Much of his fiction was serialized in periodicals between the late 1870s and the early 1900s, which helped build his reputation with everyday readers. He also published books, including children's work such as Australian Fairy Tales, and is often noted as one of the busy, versatile literary figures of colonial-era popular fiction.

Westbury died on 24 September 1901. Today, he is chiefly of interest to readers who enjoy rediscovering lively nineteenth-century popular writing and the world of Australian and New Zealand print culture in which it flourished.