Rosa Praed emerged from an early life spent in a shack in the Australian bush at the furthest edge of European settlement in colonial Queensland to become a famous novelist in late Victorian England. She was the first Australian-born novelist to achieve a significant international reputation. During a writing career of more than fifty years, beginning in 1880 when her first novel appeared, she published nearly fifty books. Most were fiction, but her work included autobiographical writing and four books written in collaboration with Irish Nationalist Member of the House of Commons Justin McCarthy. A play she adapted from one of her novels ran for nearly four months in London's West End.

Her novels reflect many aspects of her life--her pioneering childhood, her young adulthood as the daughter of a Queensland cabinet minister, her antagonism toward the bonds of marriage, her belief in reincarnation, her interest in theosophy, her...