Ada Cambridge

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AC was a prolific and well-known author of fiction (more than twenty novels), poetry (three volumes), and autobiography (two volumes) in the final four decades of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth. Married for most of her writing career, she published under her birth name. Virtually all of her books appeared in London, and her more popular works also in the USA, even though her fiction was first serialized in her adopted homeland of Australia. She is remembered now as one of the earliest Australian women poets of note, for her achievements in fiction, and for her frank account of the trials of life in the colony.
  • BirthName: Ada Cambridge
  • Married: Cross

Milestones

21 November 1844

AC was born at Wiggenhall St Germans in Norfolk.
There are four villages named Wiggenhall, distinguished by the names of their parish churches. Wiggenhall St Germans (or St Germains) lies among Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, and Wiggenhall St Peter.
Beilby, Raymond, and Cecil Hadgraft. Ada Cambridge, Tasma and Rosa Praed. Oxford University Press, 1979.
3
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Before October 9, 1890

AC published her second novel, A Marked Man: Some Episodes in his Life, which propelled her to financial success and critical acclaim both in Australia and abroad. It had been serialized two years before.
Anonymous,. “Three New Novels”. Pall Mall Gazette, Vol.
7974
, J. K. Sharpe, 9 Oct. 1890.
7974 (9 October 1890): 3
Cambridge, Ada, and Debra Adelaide. A Marked Man: Some Episodes in his Life. Pandora, 1987.
vii, xv

1914

AC published her final novel, The Making of Rachel Rowe, in New York and London.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

19 July 1926

Ada Cross (who wrote and published as Ada Cambridge ) died of heart failure at Seymour Road, Elsternwick, in Victoria, Australia, then just outside Melbourne.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Family

21 November 1844

AC was born at Wiggenhall St Germans in Norfolk.
There are four villages named Wiggenhall, distinguished by the names of their parish churches. Wiggenhall St Germans (or St Germains) lies among Wiggenhall St Mary the Virgin, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, and Wiggenhall St Peter.
Beilby, Raymond, and Cecil Hadgraft. Ada Cambridge, Tasma and Rosa Praed. Oxford University Press, 1979.
3
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.