author
Mrs. Campbell Praed
1851–1935
An Australian-born novelist who turned life in colonial Queensland into vivid, popular fiction, she became one of the first writers from Australia to build a substantial international readership. Her books often mix social observation, politics, romance, and the supernatural, giving them an unusually wide appeal.
1 Audiobook
Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land: a story of Australian life
by Mrs. Campbell Praed
About the author
Born Rosa Caroline Murray-Prior in Queensland on 27 March 1851, she later published chiefly as Mrs. Campbell Praed. She grew up on rural properties and also saw public life at close range through her father, Thomas Lodge Murray-Prior, a pastoralist and politician. Those experiences fed directly into her fiction, which often drew on colonial society, station life, and political circles.
After marrying Arthur Campbell Praed in 1872, she spent several years on a cattle station before moving to England in 1876. There she began the long writing career that made her widely known, producing novels, short fiction, and children's books. She has been described as the first Australian novelist to achieve a significant international readership, and she wrote with unusual range, moving from realism and social satire to mystery and spiritual themes.
Praed died in Torquay, England, on 10 April 1935. Today she is remembered both for her prolific output and for the way her novels preserved a sharp, personal view of nineteenth-century Queensland and the wider world she later inhabited.