Mary Gaunt

Mary was the elder daughter of William Henry Gaunt, a Victorian county court judge and Elizabeth Gaunt, née Palmer (c. 1835–1922),{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article213329807 |title=Personal |newspaper=The Ballarat Star |issue=20301 |location=Victoria, Australia |date=15 September 1922 |access-date=19 November 2022 |page=1 |via=National Library of Australia}} and was born in Chiltern, Victoria. She was educated at Grenville College, Ballarat{{efn|Her inclusion in what was a private school for boys may be explained by the fact that her brother Ernest Gaunt (later a vice-admiral) was a student there.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article11132798 |title=The Passing Show |newspaper=The Argus (Melbourne) |issue=28,492 |location=Victoria, Australia |date=15 December 1937 |access-date=20 November 2022 |page=12 |via=National Library of Australia}}}} and the University of Melbourne, being one of the first two women students to be admitted there.

She began writing for the press and in 1894 published her first novel Dave's Sweetheart. In the same year she married Dr Hubert Lindsay Miller (a widower) of Warrnambool, Victoria. He died in 1900, and, with only a small income, Gaunt (now also known as Mrs Mary Miller) went to London intending to earn a living by her writing. Gaunt left Melbourne on 15 March 1901 and never returned.

Gaunt had difficulties at first but eventually established herself, and was able to travel in the West Indies, in West Africa, and in China and other parts of the East. Her experiences were recorded in five pleasantly written travel books: Alone in West Africa (1912), A Woman in China (1914), A Broken Journey (1919), Where the Twain Meet (1922), Reflection - in Jamaica (1932). In 1929 she also published George Washington and the Men Who Made the American Revolution. Between 1895 and 1934, 16 novels or collections of short stories were published, mostly with love and adventure interests. Three other novels were written in collaboration with John Ridgwell Essex. A collection of interviews with Mary were published in the 1925 Girls' Own Annual under the headings "Pioneering for Women" parts I, II, and III, and "Strange Journeys I Have Made".

From the early 1920s, Gaunt lived mostly at Bordighera, Italy. In 1940 she fled Italy and died at Cannes in 1942. She had no children.

She had a sister Lucy, and brothers Cecil, Clive, Lancelot, Guy and Ernest; Guy and Ernest were both admirals of the Royal Navy, and Guy later became a Conservative Member of Parliament. All five brothers served in The Great War.

Gaunt was posthumously inducted onto the Victorian Honour Roll of Women in 2002.{{Cite web |date= |title=Mary Gaunt |url=https://www.vic.gov.au/mary-gaunt |access-date=2025-03-16 |website=State Government of Victoria |language=en-au}}

• Dave's Sweetheart (1894)
• Kirkham's Find (1897)
• Deadman's: An Australian Story (1898)
• Mistress Betty Carew (1903)
• The Arm of the Leopard: A West African Story (1904) [with John Ridgwell Essex]
• Fools Rush In (1906) [with John Ridgwell Essex]
• The Silent Ones (1909) [with John Ridgwell Essex]
• The Mummy Moves (1910)
• The Uncounted Cost (1910)
• Every Man's Desire (1913)
• A Wind from the Wilderness (1919)
• As the Whirlwind Passeth (1923)
• The Forbidden Town (1926)
• Saul's Daughter (1927)
• The Lawless Frontier (1929)
• Joan of the Pilchard (1930)
• Harmony: A Tale of the Old Slave Days of Jamaica (1933)
• Worlds Away (1934)

• Bingley's Gap (1888)
• Down in the World (1893)Serialised in [http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article138111898 The Australasian 23 Dec 1893, page 1S] Retrieved 7 June 2014.
• The Other Man (1894)Serialised in [http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8713333 The Argus 13 Oct 1894, page 11] Retrieved 7 June 2014.

• The Moving Finger (1895)
• The Ends of the Earth : Stories (1915)
• The Surrender and Other Happenings (1920)
• Life at Deadman's : Stories of Colonial Victoria (2001)

• Alone in West Africa (1912)
• A Woman in China (1914)
• A Broken Journey: Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho to Saghalien (1919)

• Where the Twain Meet (1922) - travel
• Peeps at Great Men : George Washington and the Men Who Made the American Revolution (1929) - children's
• Reflection in Jamaica (1932) - travel

{{Notelist}}

{{Reflist}}

• E. Archer, '[http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A080648b.htm Gaunt, Mary Eliza Bakewell (1861 - 1942)]', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 8, MUP, 1981, pp 632–633. Retrieved 30 October 2008
• {{Dictionary of Australian Biography|First=Mary|Last=Gaunt|shortlink=0-dict-biogG.html|accessdate=2008-10-30}}
• Auslit [http://www.austlit.edu.au/run?ex=ShowAgent&agentId=A%23O Gaunt, Mary (birth name: Gaunt, Mary Eliza Bakewell ) (a.k.a. Miller, Mary )]

{{wikisource|works=or}}

• {{Gutenberg author | id=9864| name=Mary Gaunt}}
• [http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#gaunt Works by Mary Gaunt] at Project Gutenberg Australia
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=Mary Gaunt}}

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Category:1861 births

Category:1942 deaths

Category:19th-century Australian novelists

Category:20th-century Australian novelists

Category:Australian women novelists

Category:Australian travel writers

Category:Australian women travel writers

Category:19th-century Australian women writers

Category:20th-century Australian women writers

Category:People from the Colony of Victoria