Bruce, Mary Grant 1878-1958

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BRUCE, Mary Grant 1878-1958

PERSONAL: Born May 24, 1878, in Sale, Victoria, Australia; died July 2, 1958, at Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England; daughter of Eyre Lewis (a surveyor) and Mary (Whittaker) Bruce; married George Evans Bruce, July 1, 1914 (died, 1946); children: Jonathan, Patrick.

CAREER: Journalist, editor, and children's book writer. Leader (magazine of Age newspaper), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, children's page editor under name "Cinderella", 1900–13; editor of Woman's World and Woman; broadcaster.

WRITINGS:

FICTION

A Little Bush Maid, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1910.

Mates at Billabong, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1911.

Timothy in Bushland, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1912.

Glen Eyre, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1912.

Norah of Billabong, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1913.

Gray's Hollow, illustrated by Patrick Dawson, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1914.

From Billabong to London, illustrated by Fred Leist, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1915.

Jim and Wally, illustrated by Bruno Salmon, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1916.

'Possum, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1917.

Dick, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1918.

Captain Jim, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1919.

Dick Lester of Kurrajong, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1920.

Rossiter's Farm, illustrated by Esther Peterson, Whitcombe and Tombs (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1920.

Back to Billabong, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1921.

The Cousin from Town, illustrated by Esther Paterson, Whitcombe and Tombs (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1922.

The Twins from Emu Plains, illustrated by Dewar Mills, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1923.

Billabong's Daughter, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1924.

The Houses of the Eagle, illustrated by Harold Copping, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1925.

Hugh Stanford's Luck, Cornstalk (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1925.

The Tower Rooms, illustrated by Dewar Mills, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1926.

Robin, illustrated by Edgar A. Holloway, Cornstalk (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1926, Angus and Robertson (London, England), 1938.

Billabong Adventures, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1927.

Anderson's Jo, Cornstalk (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1927.

Golden Fiddles, illustrated by Dewar Mills, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1928.

The Happy Traveller, illustrated by Laurie Taylor, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1929.

Bill of Billabong, illustrated by A.A. Kent, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1931.

Road to Adventure, illustrated by Laurie Taylor, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1932, Minton Balch (New York, NY), 1933.

Billabong's Luck, illustrated by Laurie Taylor, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1933.

"Seahawk," illustrated by J.F. Campbell, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1934.

Wings above Billabong, illustrated by J.F. Campbell, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1935.

Circus Ring, illustrated by J.F. Campbell, Putnam (New York, NY), 1936.

Billabong Gold, illustrated by J.F. Campbell, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1937.

Told by Peter, illustrated by J.F. Campbell, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1938.

Son of Billabong, illustrated by J.F. Campbell, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1939.

Peter and Co., illustrated by J.F. Campbell, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1940.

Karalta, Angus & Robertson (London, England), 1941.

Billabong Riders, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1942.

OTHER

The Stone Axe of Burkamukk: Aboriginal Legends Retold, illustrated by J. Macfarlane, Ward Lock (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1922.

The Peculiar Honeymoon and Other Writings, edited by Prue McKay, McPhee Gribble (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1986.

Also author of The Power Within: Four Broadcast Talks, for adults, 1941.

Bruce's papers are housed at La Trobe Library, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

ADAPTATIONS: Golden Fiddles was made into an Australian television series in 1990.

SIDELIGHTS: One of the most popular and prolific Australian authors of the twentieth century, Mary Grant Bruce introduced several generations of readers to the oddities of the Australian bush and its seemingly bizarre cast of animals, from wombats to kangaroos. In her forty novels for young readers, including the popular "Billabong" series, she presents an Australia at once exotic and bucolic. Though written primarily for children, Bruce's books were as popular with adults as with young readers in the first half of the twentieth century.

Born in 1878, Bruce spent much of her childhood on her uncle's cattle ranch in Gippsland, a region of Victoria state. Then, after her brother Patrick was killed in a shooting accident in 1885 she was sent to live with her grandparents. It was around this time that she began writing poetry, and by the age of ten she was editing her school magazine. The headmistress of Bruce's private school was so impressed with her pupil's writing abilities that she encouraged Bruce to enter the essay competition of the Melbourne Shakespeare Society; Bruce went on to take first place in the contest in 1895, 1897, and 1898.

Following a broken engagement in 1898, Bruce took a job as editor of the children's page of the Leader, a magazine operated by the Melbourne Age newspaper. Writing under the name "Cinderella," Bruce became a fixture in Melbourne publishing for the next decade, contributing to several other magazines and journals and editing Woman for a short time. Her tales later collected as A Little Bush Maid, were serialized in the Leader from 1905 to 1907. When A Little Bush Maid was published in 1910, Bruce's literary career and the world of "Billabong" were launched to a larger audience, both in Australia and in England. Her publishers, eager to capitalize on the success of this book, encouraged Bruce to write another, and the next year Mates at Billabong was published. Bruce continued the series until 1942, when the final volume, Billabong Riders, appeared. Over the years, the series sold over two million copies, making her the most popular Australian author of her day.

Bruce spent much of her life abroad once her books began furnishing her with a comfortable income. Sailing to England in 1913, she worked for a time as a journalist in London, and that same year, while visiting Ireland, she met her future husband, George Evans Bruce, a second cousin. Traveling back to Australia, the couple married, but with the advent of World War I they returned to Ireland, where Bruce's husband was stationed. In 1919, now with two sons born in Ireland, the family returned to Australia, only returning to Ireland in 1927 after the death of Bruce's parents. After the death of Bruce's twelve-year-old son Patrick, the family moved to Bexhill-on-Sea, Surrey, England. Through it all, Bruce continued her busy writing schedule, producing a book a year and also writing stories for the British Broadcasting Corporation's radio program Children's Hour and contributing to magazines such as Blackwood's. With the outbreak of World War II, the Bruces again moved to Australia. George Evans Bruce died in 1946, and eight years later Mary Bruce returned to England, where she died at Bexhill-on-Sea in 1958 at the age of eighty.

In the course of her career, Bruce attracted millions of readers due to her descriptions of life at Billabong, a prosperous but isolated ranch in northern Victoria. Billabong's residents include Norah Linton, the focus of the series. Throughout the books in the series, Norah, one of few females in this motherless family, grows to adulthood, remaining always "stalwart yet feminine," as a critic for the St. James Guide to Children's Writers described her. Mr. Linton, the prototypical patriarch, firmly but fairly oversees the whole Billabong "family," which includes Norah's brother Jim; Jim's friend Wally, who serves as Norah's love interest; Brownie, the cook and surrogate mother; and a wide cast of farm hands, including Irishman Murty O'Toole and Chinese-born Lee Wing.

The entire "Billabong" series "reflects the social and economic climate of Australia which weathered both a world war and a depression," according to the essayist for St. James Guide to Children's Writers. Bruce takes her readers from the early innocent days before World War I to the more uncharted waters of international commitments. Incorporating events from her own life as well as from Australia's contemporary history in the series, Bruce weaves within the "Billabong" books a social history of the first decades of the twentieth century. Though many of her stories are melodramatic in nature, reviewers have consistently pointed to Bruce's strong storytelling, which engages readers. The critic for St. James Guide to Children's Writers concluded that Bruce's "many books epitomised, even if they idealised, a recognisably outback Australian life-style of warm-hearted characters committed to the ideal of 'mateship.'"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Alexander, Alison, Billabong's Author: The Life of Mary Grant Bruce, Angus & Robertson (London, England), 1980.

Niall, Brenda, Seven Little Billabongs: The World of Ethel Turner and Mary Grant Bruce, Melbourne University (Melbourne, Australia), 1979.

St. James Guide to Children's Writers, 5th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

ONLINE

AussieReviews.com, http://www.aussiereviews.com/ (June 3, 2005), "Children's Book Review: Norah of Billabong, by Mary Grant Bruce."

Women's History Project Web site, http://members.ozemail.com.au/∼mghslib/projects/stwh10.html/ (June 3, 2005), "Mary Grant Bruce."

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