Molly E. Jamieson

Molly E. Jamieson is the author of Ruby: A Story of the Australian Bush, a children's novel set in Australia and first published in 1892. The book was issued under the direction of the General Literature Committee, and modern catalog and ebook records continue to identify it as her best-known work.

Very little about Jamieson herself has been firmly confirmed. AustLit notes that almost nothing is known about the author and suggests she may possibly have been Mary E. Jamieson, born in 1869 in Deniliquin, New South Wales, though that identification is uncertain. The same source also points out that she may instead have been an English writer.

What can be said with confidence is that her surviving work fits comfortably within late nineteenth-century children's fiction: a story shaped by family feeling, Christian values, and the distinctive landscape of the Australian bush. The opening matter of Ruby also credits her with other works, including Jack, At Sunset, and Molly and I, though those titles are much harder to trace today.