Ethel Turner (1870–1958), writer, first published as a teenager, when she and her sister founded their own magazine as students at Sydney Girls' High. She later edited the children's pages of the Town and Country Journal and the Illustrated Sydney News. She was 24 when her first and most famous novel, Seven Little Australians, was published. The novel was so popular that Turner was immediately contracted to produce a sequel which appeared a year later. Translated into at least 13 languages, performed as a stage play, made into a film, two television series and a musical, Seven Little Australians has remained in print for more than 100 years. Turner's output was considerable; between 1896 and 1928, when her last novel was published, she produced an average of one book each year, as well as writing regularly for newspapers and magazines. In all she wrote 34 volumes of fiction in addition to poetry, plays, and prose. Many of them were written in the study of her Sydney home, where this photograph was taken.
Gift of Richard King 2008. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
Richard King (16 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Harold Cazneaux's portraits of influential Sydneysiders included Margaret Preston and Ethel Turner, both important figures in the development of ideas about Australian identity and culture.
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