E. C. (Ernest Charles) Buley

Born in Ballarat West, Victoria, on July 4, 1869, Ernest Charles Buley grew up in a large family and was educated at Grenville College. He began working young, first in Melbourne's cultural institutions and then at the Royal Mint, where his early career ended badly after a theft conviction in 1897.

After his release from prison, he moved to England with his family in 1900 and rebuilt himself as a writer and journalist. He worked for papers including the Sunday Dispatch, Reynolds, the British-Australasian, and the Daily Mirror, and published books such as Australian Life in Town and Country (1905), North Brazil (1914), and children's historical works on Sir John Franklin and Lord Clive.

Buley is most remembered for Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War (1915), a bestselling wartime book that went through multiple early reprints. He died in 1933, leaving behind a body of work shaped by journalism, travel, and a remarkably eventful personal history.