Ethel Anderson

Ethel Campbell Louise Anderson (née Mason; 16 March 1883 – 4 August 1958) was an early twentieth century Australian poet, essayist, novelist and painter. She considered herself to be mainly a poet, but is now best appreciated for her witty and ironic stories. Anderson has been described as "a high-profile author, artist, art commentator and emissary for modernism".

Life

Ethel Anderson was born in Lillington, a suburb of Leamington, in Warwickshire, England, of Australian born parents Cyrus Mason and Louise Campbell on 16 March 1883. Her family soon moved back to Australia and she grew up in Sydney and at her grandfather's property, Rangamatty, near Picton, New South Wales.

On 8 October 1904 she married Brigadier-General Austin Thomas Anderson (1868–1949) in Ahmednagar, Bombay

At the beginning of World War I her husband was posted to France and Anderson moved to Cambridge, England, where she studied drawing at Downing College and exhibited some of her work.

The Andersons later lived in Worcestershire, and on her husband's retirement from the army in 1924 the family moved to Australia and lived at Turramurra, New South Wales. From 1927 Brigadier Anderson became secretary to several State Governors.

On 16 March 1932, she opened the inaugural exhibition of the Modern Art Centre established by Dorrit Black in Margaret Street, Sydney, to teach and promote the Cubist ideas learned during Black's study trip to France. Anderson also wrote about contemporary artists' work for magazines such as Art in Australia and Home, while her poetry and stories were published in The Spectator, Punch, the Cornhill Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Bulletin. Her poetry was influenced by her knowledge of French literature and Modernist work, with considerable formal and metrical experimentation. Her poem The Song of Hagar was set to music by John Antill.

The death of her husband in 1949 meant that she had to support herself, which she did through her writing, serialising her first novel At Parramatta in The Bulletin. She died on 4 August 1958 in Sydney.

Works

Poetry Squatter's Luck and Other Poems (1942) Sunday At Yarralumla: A Symphony (1947) The Song of Hagar to the Patriarch Abraham (1957)

Non-fiction Adventures In Appleshire (1944) Timeless Garden (1945) Joy of Youth: The Letters of Patrick Hore-Ruthven (1950, ed.)

Fiction Indian Tales (1948) At Parramatta (1956) The Little Ghosts (1959) The Best of Ethel Anderson (1973, ed. by J. D. Pringle)

Painting Murals in the Children's Chapel of St James' Church, Sydney (with others)