Zora Cross
| Zora Cross | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
Zora Bernice May Cross 18 October 1890 Eagle Farm, Queensland, Australia |
| Died |
22 January 1964 (aged 73) Glenbrook, New South Wales, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation | poet and novelist |
| Known for | Songs of Love and Life |
| Parent(s) | Ernest William Cross (accountant) and Mary Louisa Eliza Ann, nee Skyring |
Zora Bernice May Cross (18 May 1890 – 22 January 1964) was an Australian poet, novelist and journalist.
Life
Zora Bernice May Cross was born on May 18, 1890 on Eagle Farm, Brisbane to Earnest William Cross and Mary Louisa Eliza Ann. Her father was a Sydney born accountant.[1] Cross inherited her love for literature from both her parents, poetry from her mother and Celtic knowledge from her father, who was also the son of an Irish printer. and was educated at Ipswich Girls' Grammar School and then Sydney Teachers' College from 1909 to 1910. She taught for three years and then worked as a journalist, for the Boomerang and then as a freelance writer.[2] On March 11, 1911, she married Stuart Smith but later refused to live with him. This led to her marriage being dissolved on September 10, 1922. Later on in her life, Cross had a "de facto" husband, David McKee Wright, who she had two daughters with.
She was known not only for her poems, including sonnet sequences, but for a private life scandalous by the standards of her time. She wrote about sex, childbirth and war, in terms also considered too explicit by contemporaries. Cross supported herself and her family though acting in one of Phillip Lytton's companies and teaching elocutions and then some freelance journalisms.
As Bernice May, she wrote a regular column in the 1930s for the Australian Women's Mirror.[2]
Bibliography
Novels
- Daughters of the Seven Mile (1924)
- The Lute-Girl of Rainyvale (1925)
- Sons of the Seven Mile (1927)
- The Victor (1933)
- This Hectic Age (1944)
Poetry collections
- A Song of Mother Love (1916)
- Songs of Love and Life (1917)[3]
- The Lilt of Life (1918)[4]
- The City of Riddle-Me-Ree (1918)
Notes
- ↑ Green, Dorothy. Cross, Zora Bernice May (1890–1964). Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
- 1 2 Adelaide (1988) p. 42
- ↑ http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Love-Life-Zora-Cross/dp/B003F3PYFU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406998054&sr=1-1&keywords=Songs+of+Love+and+Life+%281917%29
- ↑ http://www.amazon.com/The-lilt-life-Zora-Cross/dp/1115054155
References
- Adelaide, Debra (1988) Australian women writers: a bibliographic guide, London, Pandora