Amy Eleanor Mack

Amy Eleanor Mack (6 June 1876, Port Adelaide – 4 November 1939, Sydney), also known as Amy Eleanor Harrison and Mrs. Launcelot Harrison, was an Australian writer, journalist, and editor. She was honorary secretary of the National Council of Women of New South Wales. She is best known as a children's author of such books as Bushland stories and Scribbling Sue (1914) and others, as well as a journalist and an editor of Sydney Morning Herald.

Life Amy Eleanor Mack was born on 6 June 1876 in Port Adelaide and was one of thirteen children in the family.

Amy Eleanor Mack died of arteriosclerosis on 4 November 1939 in St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney and was cremated with Presbyterian forms. In 1907 she became an editor of the 'Women's Page' of the Sydney Morning Herald and remained in this position till 1914. These stories were adopted for supplementary reading in primary schools and were considered the best of their kind produced in Australia by that time. Though the publisher was not sure about the success of the children's books and produced them economically with no illustrations, Mack's books found an immediate audience within the schools where nature studies had been recently added to the primary school curriculum. Bushland Stories became so popular that it was reprinted eleven times by 1940. the New York Public Library, the British Library and others.

Books

A Bush Calendar (1909) Bushland Stories (1910, volume 1) Birdland Stories (1910, volume 2) Waterside Stories (1910, volume 3) Bush Days (1911) Scribbling Sue and Other Stories (1914) The Tom-Tit's Nest (1914) The Wilderness (1922) The Fantail's House (1928, volume 1) The Gum Leaf That Flew: And Other Stories of the Australian Bushland (1928, volume 2) Why the Spinebill's Beak is Long (1928, volume 3) The Little Black Duck (1928) The Flower Fairies (1928) The Bird's Concert (1928)