Zora cross biography

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Her first book of poems, A Song of Mother Love (1916), was published in Brisbane in answer to the German 'Song of Hate'. In addition to her children's stories such as 'Clem's Ride' (1906), a number of her letters and other items were published from time to time, and these include some interesting biographical material, etc. She also published a number of novels in serial and book form, but they have attracted little critical attention.

Her struggle to support her three children, mainly by freelance journalism, makes a painful story, though she remained cheerful, free of self-pity and simply got on with her work. Her verse, prose and correspondence with the likes of Ethel Turner, George Robertson (of Angus & Robertson) and Mary Gilmore place Zora Cross among the key personalities of Australia’s literary world in the early twentieth century.

Her younger daughter remembers her as 'a delightful and amusing parent, who never for one moment lost sight of her priority as a writer and a poetess'. On 11 March 1911 she married Stuart Smith, an actor, but refused to live with him and the marriage was dissolved on 10 September 1922. Cross taught primary school for some time, but left to give birth to her first child.

This was assisted by a small pension from the Commonwealth Literary Fund, but Cross's family continued to live in poverty. She was hailed as a genius, and many expected her to endure as a household name alongside Shakespeare and Rossetti. Her first marriage (to Stuart Smith) failed and she eventually lived in a de facto relationship with David McKee Wright, the editor of the Bulletin's "Red Page" from 1916 to 1926.

Cross's first book of poetry, A Song of Mother Love, was published in 1916.