David George Stead

CSacquired her third mother in her lifetime of four and a half years when her father married as his second wife Ada Gibbins .

Christina was therefore largely raised by her father, David George Stead , a rationalist, a Fabian socialist, and a naturalist in the Government Fisheries Department. He mothered her after her mother's death, taught her...

CS 's father would have liked to have her education entirely in his own hands. The first books to be her favourites were the works of W. T. Stead , and fairy stories by the...

At the age of eleven CS won a district competition for an essay. Her subject (derived from the work of her father the naturalist) was the life-cycle of the frog. Within a few years she...

In July 1925, the same month that she gave up teaching, CS 's father submitted her collection of stories for children (illustrated by her art teacher) to the major Australian publishing firm of Angus and Robertson

CS 's probably best-known novel, The Man Who Loved Children, based on her experiences growing up in Sydney, Australia, with her father and his second family of children, was published in New York.

CS began writing this book because, although her love for her father was deep and enduring, she was haunted by her terrible experiences as a child. Writing it, she said later, was as if I...