M. L. (Mary Louisa) Skinner

Born in Perth in 1876, Mary Louisa "Mollie" Skinner was an Australian writer, nurse, and Quaker. She spent part of her early life in Britain and Ireland, trained as a nurse, and later served in India and during the First World War. Those experiences fed directly into her writing, giving it an observant, lived-in quality.

Skinner is most often remembered for The Boy in the Bush, a novel connected with D. H. Lawrence. She had drafted the original story and, after meeting Lawrence in Western Australia, shared her manuscript with him; the published book grew out of that collaboration. She also wrote memoir and fiction of her own, including work based on her wartime service and her life in Western Australia.

She died in 1955, and her reputation has lasted as that of a distinctive regional voice whose work links Australian literary history with a remarkable personal life.