the best-selling Australian children's author throughout most of the years from 1930 to the mid-1950s, and book sales during her lifetime have been estimated at over three million copies. She was enormously popular with children, and was inundated when she made herself available to sign copies of her books at various school and public libraries.
Background
Almost immediately after she married Major George Evans Bruce on 1st July 1914, World War I impinged on her honeymoon, forcing a change of plans so that she moved to live in southern Ireland, from there in 1917 to Wales and then to England. The Bruces returned to Australia early in 1919 until after Mary's parents had passed away some years later, when they moved to Drumcrinna near Tyrone in Northern Ireland with her two sons, Jonathan and Patrick (whom she called Pat). Had not Ireland's fiery eruptions after the end of the "Great War" changed the entire political and security situation, they would most probably have moved to County Cork or maybe County Limerick instead. Both George and Mary saw themselves as British and Irish (in George's case at least, most definitely not English), and it made no sense to them to locate their young family in such a turbulent place as was the Irish Free State at that time.
George Bruce passed away in 1949, and Mary decided to spend her last years in England, where she lived until her death in July 1958. She was survived by her son, Jonathan and four grandchildren. Her works continue to be read around the world, and they make it a better place.
Mary Grant Bruce's life has been the subject of two biographies: Billabong's Author, by Alison Alexander, published by Angus and Robertson in 1979; and Seven Little Billabongs, by Brenda Niall, published by Melbourne University Press in the same year.
Education
After being educated at Miss Estelle Beausire's Ladies High School, Bruce worked as a secretary before establishing a career as a journalist, poet and writer for Australian magazines.
Career
In 1903 she helped form the Writer's Club, which later was submerged into the Lyceum Club (Australia). A Little Bush Maid, her first major success, was originally published as a serial in the children's page of the Lead. Its success enabled her to work as a full-time writer and journalist, and spawned the Billabong series.
From 1910 through to 1942 she wrote a total of 37 children's novels, including the 15 Billabong books, which followed the fortunes of the Linton family, and their friends through war, drought and adventure upon adventure. The Billabong series had an enormous impact on how early - and - mid 20th century .
Mary Grant Bruce also wrote numerous short stories and articles, several of which were re-published posthumously in The Peculiar Honeymoon.
Bruce was a contributor to many magazines, including Blackwood's Magazine, the Morning Post, the Daily Mail, Windsor Magazine, Cassell's Magazine, Strand, Argus, Age, the Melbourne Herald, the Australasian, the Leader, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sydney Mail, the Lone Hand the Auckland Weekly Press, Woman's World, West Australian and the British Australasian. She claimed to have written on every subject save that of dress. Bruce edited Woman's World for six months in 1926.