Ethel Pedley

Ethel Charlotte Pedley (19 June 1859 – 6 August 1898) was an English-Australian author and musician.

Early life Ethel Charlotte Pedley was born on 19 June 1859 at Acton, near London. She was the daughter of Frederick Pedley and his wife Eliza, née Dolby. where she studied with her uncle Prosper Sainton, professor of violin, and won a medal. In 1896 Emmeline Woolley and Pedley visited London and persuaded the Associated Board of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music to extend their examinations to the Australian colonies. The first examiner visited in 1897.

Author A scan of a first edition copy of Dot and the Kangaroo, which included a photograph of Pedley and a copy of her signature. Pedley's only published book is Dot and the Kangaroo, which featured a little girl named Dot who becomes lost in the Australian outback, and is helped to find her way back home by a friendly kangaroo. The illustrations were drawn by Frank P. Mahony.

Pedley was a believer in the conservation of the Australian flora and fauna, and usually wrote from this perspective, singling out 'man' as disconnected from nature and the rest of the animals. It is thought her writing was inspired by her visits to the property owned by her brother Arthur, near Walgett.