Editing Ada Cambridge

{{Short description|English-born Australian writer (1844–1926)}}
{{Use British English|date=October 2016}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2024}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Ada Cambridge
| image              = Ada-Cambridge.jpg
| caption            = 
| birth_name         = 
| birth_date         = {{birth date|1844|11|21|df=y}}
| birth_place        = St Germans, [[Norfolk]], England
| death_date         = {{death date and age|1926|7|19|1844|11|21|df=y}}
| death_place        = [[Melbourne]], Australia
| burial_place       = [[Brighton General Cemetery]]
| other_names        = A.C. ''and'' Ada Cross
| known_for          = 
| education          = 
| employer           = 
| occupation         = Novelist, poet, memoirist and journalist
| title              = 
| height             = 
| term               = 
| predecessor        = 
| successor          = 
| party              = 
| boards             = 
| spouse             = Rev. George Frederick Cross
| partner            = 
| children           = Five, including Dr K. Stuart Cross
| relatives          = 
| signature          = 
| website            = 
| footnotes          = 
}}

'''Ada Cambridge''' (21 November 1844 – 19 July 1926), later known as '''Ada Cross''', was an English-born Australian writer. She wrote more than 25 works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two [[Autobiography|autobiographical]] works.<ref name="Cato (1989) p. v">Cato (1989) p. v</ref> Many of her novels were [[Serial (literature)|serialised]] in Australian newspapers but never published in book form. While she was known to friends and family by her married name, Ada Cross, her newspaper readers knew her as ''A.C.'' She later reverted to her maiden name, Ada Cambridge, and that is how she is known today.<ref>Morrison (1988) p. xv.</ref>

==Life==
Ada was born at [[Wiggenhall St Germans|St Germans]], [[Norfolk]], the second child of Thomasine and Henry Cambridge, a gentleman farmer.<ref>Brighton Cemetery</ref> She was educated by [[governess]]es, an experience she abhorred. She wrote in a book of reminiscences: "I can truthfully affirm that I never learned anything which would now be considered worth learning until I had done with them all and started foraging for myself. I did have a few months of boarding-school at the end, and a very good school for its day it was, but it left no lasting impression on my mind." (''The Retrospect'', Chapter IV). It was an unmarried aunt who contributed most to her intellectual development.<ref name="Barton (1988) p. 134">Barton (1988) p. 134.</ref>

On 25 April 1870, she married the Rev. George Frederick Cross and a few weeks later sailed for Australia. She arrived in Melbourne in August and was surprised to find it a well-established city. Her husband was sent to [[Wangaratta]], then to [[Yackandandah]] (1872), [[Ballan, Victoria|Ballan]] (1874), [[Coleraine, Victoria|Coleraine]] (1877), [[Bendigo]] (1884) and [[Beechworth]] (1885), where they remained until 1893. Her ''Thirty Years in Australia'' (1903) describes their experiences in these parishes. She experienced lost children to [[whooping cough]] and [[scarlet fever]].<ref>Morrison (1988) p. xxvii.</ref>

[[File:Grave of Ada Cambridge (1844–1926) at Brighton General Cemetery.jpg|thumb|right|150px|Cambridge's grave at Brighton General Cemetery]]

Cross at first was the typical hard-working wife of a country clergyman, taking part in all the activities of the parish and incidentally making her own children's clothes. Her health, however, broke down, for a number of reasons, including a near-fatal [[miscarriage]] and a serious carriage accident, and her activities had to be reduced, but she continued to write.

In 1893, Cross and her husband moved to their last parish, [[Williamstown, Victoria|Williamstown]], near Melbourne, and remained there until 1909. Her husband went on the retired clergy list at the end of 1909 with permission to operate in the diocese until 1912. In 1913 they both returned to England, where they stayed until his death on 27 February 1917. Ada returned to Australia later that year. She died in Melbourne on 19 July 1926, and was buried at [[Brighton General Cemetery]]. She was survived by a daughter and a son, Dr K. Stuart Cross.

==Career==
While Cambridge began writing in the 1870s to make money to help support her children, her formal published career spans from 1865 with ''Hymns on the Litany'' and ''The Two Surplices'', to 1922 with an article "Nightfall" in ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]''.<ref>Morrison (1988) p. xxii.</ref> According to the scholar Patricia Barton, her early works "contain the seeds of her lifelong insistence on and pursuit of physical, spiritual and moral integrity, as well as the interweaving of poetry and prose which was to typify her writing career."<ref name="Barton (1988) p. 134"/> [[Nancy Cato]]<ref name="Cato (1989) p. v"/> writes that "some of her ideas were considered daring and even a little improper for a clergyman's wife. She touches on extramarital affairs and the physical bondage of wives."

In 1875, Cambridge's first novel, ''Up the Murray'', appeared in the ''Australasian'', but was not published separately. It was not until 1890, with the publication of ''A Marked Man'', that her fame as a writer was established.<ref>Morrison (1988) p. xix.</ref> However, despite regular good reviews, there were many who discounted her because she did not write in the literary tradition of the time, one that was largely non-urban and masculine, that focused on survival against the harsh environment.<ref>Morrison (1988) p. xx.</ref>

Cambridge was the first president of the Women Writers Club and an honorary life-member of the [[Lyceum Club (Australia)|Lyceum Club]] of Melbourne. Her many friends in the literary world included [[Jennings Carmichael|Grace "Jennings" Carmichael]], [[Rolf Boldrewood]], [[Ethel Turner]], and [[George Robertson (publisher)|George Robertson]].<ref>Barton (1988) p. 133.</ref>

==Legacy==
The Ada Cambridge Prizes were first awarded in 2005. There are now four such prizes: the Ada Cambridge Biographical Prose Prize, the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize, the Young Adas Short Story Prize, and the Young Adas Graphic Short Story Prize. These all carry a cash component and winners are announced at the Williamstown Literary Festival each year.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Adas – Winners Announced! – Williamstown Literary Festival|url=https://www.willylitfest.org.au/2016/06/18/the-adas/|access-date=2020-08-03|language=en-US|archive-date=28 September 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200928070439/https://www.willylitfest.org.au/2016/06/18/the-adas/|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Cambridge Street in the [[Canberra]] suburb of [[Cook, Australian Capital Territory|Cook]] is named after her.<ref>{{cite news|date=2 October 1969|title=AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY National Memorials Ordinance 1928–1959|page=5791|newspaper=[[Commonwealth of Australia Gazette]]|location=Australia|url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article241045879|access-date=16 December 2020|via=Trove}}</ref>

==Selected works==
{{wikisource author}}
;Novels
*''The Two Surplices'' (1865)
*''My Guardian: A Story of the Fen Country'' (1874)
*''Up the Murray'' (1875)
*''In Two Years Time'' (1879)
*''Dinah'' (1880)
*''A Mere Chance'' (1880)
*''Missed in the Crowd'' (1882)
*''A Girl's Ideal'' (1882)
*''Across the Grain'' (1882)
*''The Three Miss Kings'' (1883)
*''A Marriage Ceremony'' (1884)
*''A Little Minx'' (1885)
*''Against the Rules'' (1886)
*''A Black Sheep'' (1889)
*''A Woman's Friendship'' (1889) (Serialised in the ''Age'', 1889; first published in book form in 1988)
* ''A Marked Man'' (1890)
*''Not All in Vain'' (1891)
*''Fidelis'' (1895)
*''A Humble Enterprise'' (1896)
*''[[Materfamilias]]'' (1898)
*''[[Path and Goal]]'' (1900)
*''[[The Devastators (Cambridge novel)|The Devastators]]'' (1901)
*''Sisters'' (1904)
*''A Platonic Friendship'' (1905)
*''A Happy Marriage'' (1906)
*''The Eternal Feminine'' (1907)
*''The Making of Rachel Rowe'' (1914)

;Poetry collections
*''Hymns on the Litany'' (1865)
*''Hymns on the Holy Communion'' (1866)
*''Echoes'' (1869)
*''The Manor House and Other Poems'' (1875)
*''Unspoken Thoughts'' (1887)
*''The Hand in the Dark and Other Poems'' (1913)

;Short story collections
*''The Vicar's Guest: A Tale'' (1869)
*''At Midnight and Other Stories'' (1897)

;Children's fiction
*''Little Jenny'' (1867)

;Autobiography
*''Thirty Years in Australia'' (1903)
*''The Retrospect'' (1912)

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
{{A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature}}
*[http://www.brightoncemetery.com/HistoricInterments/150Names/cambridgea.htm Ada Cambridge (1844–1926)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514085707/http://www.brightoncemetery.com/HistoricInterments/150Names/cambridgea.htm |date=14 May 2011 }} Gravesite at Brighton General Cemetery (Vic)
*Barton, Patricia (1988) 'Ada Cambridge: Writing for her Life' in Adelaide, Debra (1988) ''A Bright and Fiery Troop: Australian Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century'', Ringwood, Penguin
*Cato, Nancy (1989) 'Introduction' in Cambridge, Ada (1989) ''Sisters'' (Penguin Australian Women's Library)
*Morrison, Elizabeth (1988) 'Editor's introduction' in Cambridge, Ada (1988) ''A woman's friendship'' (Colonial Text Series)
*Roe, J.I. (2006) 'Cambridge, Ada (1844–1926)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A030310b.htm
*{{Dictionary of Australian Biography|First=Ada|Last=Cambridge|shortlink=0-dict-biogCa-Ch.html#cambridge1}}
*[http://www.austlit.edu.au/run?ex=ShowAgent&agentId=A%296E&mode=full AustLit author entry.]

==External links==

*{{Internet Archive author |sname=Ada Cambridge}}
*{{Librivox author |id=1328}}
*[http://www.sonnets.org/cambridge.htm Ada Cambridge] contains the text of three of her sonnets.
*[http://www.cordula.ws/a-cambridgea.html Cordula's Web] features selected poems from Ada Cambridge.
*[http://manybooks.net/authors/cambridg.html manybooks.net] offers free PDF formatted works by Ada Cambridge.
*[http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/oztexts/ozlitbrowseC.html SETIS] contains free PDF formatted works and print works for purchase by Ada Cambridge.
*[http://www.willylitfest.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=7&Itemid=63 Williamstown Literary Festival] contains details of stories shortlisted for, and winners of, the 'Ada Cambridge Writers Prize' in 2008 and 2009.
*{{gutenberg author| id=1403| name=Ada Cambridge}}
*[http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/cambridge-ada/ 119 poems] featured at the Australian Poetry Library.

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cambridge, Ada}}
[[Category:1844 births]]
[[Category:1926 deaths]]
[[Category:People from King's Lynn and West Norfolk (district)]]
[[Category:English women novelists]]
[[Category:English women poets]]
[[Category:19th-century Australian novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century Australian novelists]]
[[Category:Australian memoirists]]
[[Category:Australian women novelists]]
[[Category:Australian women poets]]
[[Category:Victorian women writers]]
[[Category:Victorian writers]]
[[Category:19th-century English women writers]]
[[Category:19th-century English writers]]
[[Category:20th-century English women writers]]
[[Category:20th-century English writers]]
[[Category:19th-century Australian women]]
[[Category:20th-century Australian women]]
[[Category:English emigrants to colonial Australia]]
[[Category:Burials at Brighton General Cemetery]]
[[Category:Australian women memoirists]]