Ada Cambridge

Ada Cambridge (21 November 1844 – 19 July 1926) was an English-born Australian writer. Born in Norfolk into a middle-class farming family, she began writing hymns in her teenage years and then became a contributor of poetry and short stories for church magazines. In 1870 she married a clergyman and moved to Australia, where she and her husband resided in a series of rural parishes between 1870 and 1893. To supplement the family's income, she began publishing serial novels, short stories, and poetry in Australian newspapers. She became a popular writer, particularly of romance fiction.

By 1893 when the family moved to Williamstown in Melbourne, Ada had begun to publish her novels internationally and had established herself as one of the country's leading authors. She wrote around 25 novels, two memoirs, and five volumes of hymns and poetry during her lifetime. She also contributed essays to international magazines and periodicals, including the Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review. Her writing largely consisted of romance novels, in which she often explored the status of women and the social norms surrounding marriage.

While Cambridge was a popular and well-regarded writer during her lifetime, her literary reputation suffered in the years following her death. Her writing was widely dismissed as consisting of shallow and formulaic romances rooted in English traditions, which placed it at odds with the emerging "bush nationalist" genre of Australian literature. However, interest in her work saw a resurgence from feminist scholars during the 1970s. Scholars have since argued that her writing features more complexity and radicalism than had previously been appreciated, including frequent critiques of organised religion and social structures, as well as the usage of irony and satire.

Biography

Early life

Ada Cambridge was born in Wiggenhall St Germans, Norfolk, on 21 November 1844. Her mother Thomasina (née Emmerson) was the daughter of a doctor, while her father Henry was a gentleman farmer. Around 1845 or 1846, the family moved to the nearby town of Thorpland. Their financial fortunes began to suffer as a result of her father's neglect of his business in favour of recreational pursuits, including hunting and horse-riding. During the 1850s the family moved to the town of Downham Market, where her father became a trader of corn and seeds. In the late 1850s the Cambridge family moved again to Great Yarmouth, where her father began to work as a "commercial traveller". While living in Great Yarmouth, at least two of Ada's siblings died within a few months, after which the family moved again to Ely in Cambridgeshire.

While Ada's parents regarded her as a gifted child, she received a limited education. She was educated by a series of seven governesses, who were themselves largely poorly educated, and spent a few months at a boarding school before returning due to homesickness. Despite her limited education, Ada was a voracious reader. Her youngest aunt, who worked as a governess for European royal families, took an interest in her education and encouraged her interest in literature. She also advised Ada during the development of her early literary works.

Engraving of a large gothic cathedral

Ely Cathedral, pictured 1874

After moving to Ely, Ada's life became increasingly centred on religion. She became a district visitor—women in the church who volunteered to assist the clergy, such as by visiting the poor and elderly—and later wrote that she had considered becoming a nun. At around the age of 17 of 18, she began writing hymns for a church magazine. She published her first volume of hymns, Hymns on the Litany, in 1865, and followed this with a second volume, Hymns on the Holy Communion, in 1866. She appeared in biographical dictionaries of hymn writers, where she was described as a talented and popular writer, and her works were included in several major hymnals.

At the encouragement of her rector's wife, Ada wrote her first works of fiction for a church literary competition, in which she won both first and second prize. The priest who judged the competition encouraged her to continue writing, and she began to regularly contribute poetry and works of fiction to church magazines and periodicals. Three of her early short stories have survived—"The Two Surplices", "Little Jenny", and "The Vicar's Guest"—all of which are moral tales centred on religious themes and the experiences of the poor.

In 1870 Ada was engaged to a curate named George Frederick Cross. Cross was the son of a local grocer and had recently graduated from St Augustine's College, a missionary college that had been established to prepare men to join the colonial clergy. After a seven-week engagement, they married on 25 April 1870 in the Holy Trinity Parish Church at Ely Cathedral. On 1 June they sailed for Australia, with plans to return to England soon.

Life in Australia

Wangaratta

Upon their arrival in Australia on 19 August 1870, Ada and George spent their first weeks in the colony touring Melbourne. Ada later wrote that she was impressed by the standard of life in the city and by the new public infrastructure that had recently been established, including the University of Melbourne, the Botanical Gardens, and the new Public Library. On 31 August they left Melbourne and travelled to the country parish of Wangaratta, 240 kilometres north of the city, to which George had been appointed curate. The expansive parish was a farming district with a population of around 1400.

Ada and George settled in a cottage on the edge of the town. In March of the following year, Ada gave birth to the first of her five children, Arthur Stuart. She became actively involved in the town's social and community life, as well as helping to raise money for George's church. In February 1871, Ada published her first literary work written in Australia in The Sydney Mail: a romantic poem titled "From the Battlefield, Good Night". The income that she earned from her writing helped to supplement her husband's meagre clergy stipend; the Church of England in Victoria persistently struggled to support its clergy, paying them far less than other denominations' ministers. 

Yackandandah and Ballan

In January 1872, following George's ordination to the priesthood, they left for his next posting at Yackandandah. The town was located near Beechworth to Melbourne's north-east and had a population of around 800. The parish that George was now responsible for spanned more than 100 miles, forcing him to spend much of his time separated from Ada as he travelled to minister in the far reaches of the district. Ada played an active role in the parish, playing the church organ, teaching classes at the Sunday School, and conducting the church choir. She also began to publish more poetry and fiction in newspapers, making an increasingly substantial contribution to the family's income. In November 1873 Ada gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Edith Constance, who died of whooping cough just 10 months later. Her grief at Edith's death led to a crisis of faith and acted as the catalyst for an increasing scepticism towards religious authority, which would endure for the remainder of her life. She fell into a depression and became unable to bear to remain in their home; in response, George requested a transfer to less expansive parish that would require him to spend less time separated from Ada.

Engraved illustration of a small gothic church with a steep roof

St. John's Anglican Church in Ballan

In December 1874, George and Ada moved to Ballan, a town of 700 located thirty kilometres from Ballarat. The family's financial difficulties became increasingly urgent, with George finding himself unable to keep up with the instalments owed on his debts following their relocation. Ada wrote to the newspaper The Australasian in December 1874 and offered to contribute a serial novel, enclosing the first two chapters of her proposed story. The fourteen-episode romance serial, titled Up the Murray, was published in the newspaper between March and July of 1875 and was Ada's first extended work of fiction. The success of the serial caused Ada and George to be welcomed into the colony's literary and intellectual circles. Later that year Ada followed the serial with a volume of romantic and religious poetry titled The Manor House and Other Poems.

In 1876, while Ada was nearing the birth of her third child, her four-year-old son died of scarlet fever. She gave birth to her third child, Vera Lyon, two weeks later on 26 April. That year, she published another romance serial, My Guardian, in Cassell's Family Magazine. In 1877, Ada experienced a carriage accident while travelling between Ballan and Ballarat, leaving her with permanent disabilities and back pain.

Coleraine

In July 1877 Ada and George moved to Coleraine following the establishment of the new Diocese of Ballarat. Their new parish, the Parish of the Wannon, was an expansive sheep-farming district with a population of 800 located 370 kilometres to Melbourne's west. The rural parish's isolated location forced the family to take on a larger staff, and they quickly found that the parish was in financial difficulties. The strain this placed on George's clergy stipend forced Ada to increase the pace of her writing. Ada gave birth to her fourth child, Hugh Cambridge, on 14 August of the following year. She also published her first novel in book form—My Guardian: A Story of the Fen Country—based on the serial that she had published two years earlier.

In 1879 George's stipend was reduced from £300 to £250, placing further pressure on their finances. They attempted to raise cattle on their land, before abandoning the plan and instead leasing the land to a corn farmer. Ada also continued writing, producing two new serial romances: In Two Years' Time for The Australasian, and The Captain's Charge for The Sydney Mail. She followed this with another romance serial, Dinah, published in The Australasian between December 1879 and February 1880.

On 3 January 1880 Ada gave birth to her fourth child, a son named Kenneth Stuart. She suffered a breakdown and became housebound, and eventually went away to a retreat in Mount Macedon to recover. She also suffered a near-fatal miscarriage soon after. During her period of recovery, she devoted herself to her writing. Her next serial, A Mere Chance, was published in The Australasian between July and November of that year. As her depression deepened in 1881, she began to write increasingly melancholy poetry, including a poem in which she expressed her support for euthanasia. George continued his visits to the remote parts of his parish, leaving Ada alone for long periods with her young children. She began to publish many poems expressing her sadness and her crisis of faith. She also published three more serials in 1881 and 1882: Missed in the Crowd, A Girl's Ideal, and Across the Grain. In 1883 Ada published what would be one of her most popular works, The Three Miss Kings, as a serial in The Australasian.

Sandhurst and Beechworth

Photograph of a small church surrounded by trees

Christ Church in Beechworth pictured c. 1888

In January 1884, the family moved to Sandhurst (now Bendigo), a town of 50,000 people that was one of the colony's major centres. That year, Ada wrote four short stories and also began to rework some of her earlier writing to support the family financially. In March 1885 the family moved again to the large goldfields town of Beechworth, where they would remain for the next nine years. While George's stipend had finally been increased, Ada continued writing. She published her next serial, A Little Minx, in The Sydney Mail in 1885, and followed this with Against the Rules in The Australasian between 1885 and 1886.

In March 1886 Ada was admitted to hospital due to complications associated with her earlier miscarriage, with fears that she would not survive the admission. She remained in hospital for three months before leaving against her doctor's advice; the admission, which cost £200, had severely cut into the family's finances.

Ada published another volume of poetry, Unspoken Thoughts, anonymously in London the following year. The volume features a number of poems centred on loss and grief, as well as Ada's views on religion and marriage. The poems explored controversial themes, including the nature of God, the hypocrisy of organised religion, and the topics of marital vows, prostitution, euthanasia, and suicide. The volume was positively received but did not sell well, with only 150 of the 500 copies sold. Ada withdrew the volume from publication for reasons that remain uncertain; she would later refuse to allow the more controversial poems from the volume to be reprinted.

Ada Cambridge pictured sitting outside with her son Kenneth (aged around 6) sitting on her lap. Her daughter Vera (aged around 10) stands to her left.

Ada Cambridge with her children Vera and Kenneth, c. 1886

Ada's next novel, A Marked Man, was serialised under the title A Black Sheep in 1888–1889 and then published in book form in London the following year; it was her first major financial success, earning her £197. The novel critiques organised religion and explores themes of social reform and conformity. Her next serial, A Woman's Friendship, appeared in The Age between August and October 1889. During this period Ada's fiction began to feature explorations of the "New Woman" and women's status in society, as well as the social norms surrounding marriage. Her stories also began to feature greater criticism of the hypocrisy and snobbery of the clergy, and frequently dealt with the theme of unhappy marriages.

By the early 1890s, Ada was a well-known and popular writer. She moved away from publishing serials in local newspapers and instead pursued international book publication, increasing her reputation as a writer both domestically and overseas. She wrote a new romance novel titled Not All in Vain, first serialised in the Australasian in 1890–1891 and then published in book form the following year. The publication of A Marked Man, The Three Miss Kings, and Not All in Vain between 1890 and 1892 cemented her reputation as one of Australia's leading writers.

Williamstown

Photograph of a small brick church with a steep roof

Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Williamstown

In October 1893 the family moved to Williamstown in Melbourne. Shortly after their move, the family's finances began to suffer as a result of Melbourne's 1890s economic depression, particularly given their sons' sizeable school fees. Ada published six books over the next five years: A Little Minx (1893), A Marriage Ceremony (1894), Fidelis (1895), A Humble Enterprise (1896), At Midnight and Other Stories (1897), and Materfamilias (1898). Three of these were based on serials that she had previous published in newspapers.

Ada also began to write a number of short stories for English periodicals. In 1897 she published a collection of short stories titled At Midnight and Other Stories. Her reputation as a writer continued to grow; in 1896 she was the subject of a chapter in the book Australian Writers by the critic Desmond Byre, and in 1898 she was identified as one of Australia's two leading "poetesses" in the book The Development of Australian Literature. By 1897 she was earning around £1000 per year from her writing.

Ada's next two novels, Path and Goal and The Devastators, were published in 1900 and 1901. In 1902, Ada became the first president of a newly formed society of women writers, the Melbourne Writers' Club, which would eventually become the Lyceum Club. She also contracted with a publisher to write her memoir, Thirty Years in Australia. However, she also suffered a series of personal tragedies; in 1902 her son Hugh died of typhoid fever at the age of 24, and in 1904 her son-in-law committed suicide, leaving Ada and George to support their daughter Vera and infant grandson. That year Ada confessed in a letter to Bertram Stevens that she was without any savings and that her finances had been strained by the need to provide for her daughter and grandson. She increased the pace of her writing, and by 1907 had published four new novels: Sisters (1904), A Platonic Friendship (1905), A Happy Marriage (1906), and The Eternal Feminine (1907). 

In 1908, Ada and George returned to England for six months to settle the legal affairs associated with the inheritance of his sister's estate. While in England, Ada began to write essays for the Atlantic Monthly and the North American Review. In these essays, she wrote about ageing and her view of religious authority. She also wrote about the women's rights movement, characterising herself as a supporter of women's rights while suggesting that modern women had undermined their own cause and allowed themselves to be treated as inferior to men by acting immaturely. Ada and George returned to Australia at the beginning of 1909.

Later life and death

In December 1909, George retired from his ministry in Williamstown. The following year he spent six months acting as a substitute priest in Carrick, Tasmania, although whether Ada accompanied him is unknown. The couple moved to England in 1912 and settled in Cambridge. There, she published three books: a reminiscence on her early life in England titled The Retrospect (1912), a poetry collected titled The Hand in the Dark (1913), a novel titled The Making of Rachel Rowe (1914). After George's death in February 1917, Ada returned to Australia that August.

Image of a grave in a cemetery

Cambridge's grave at Brighton General Cemetery

Ada had become too frail to write, but continued to attempt to support herself independently. In 1919 she offered a volume of short stories to Angus & Robertson, but the publisher declined to proceed with the work. In 1921 Ada suffered a stroke, and as she became increasingly lonely and ill, she developed a correspondence with the publisher George Robertson. She published her last essay, "Nightfall", in 1922, in which she described the "secret humiliations" of old age and wrote of her fear of becoming dependent on others' charity. Her final published work was likely a poem that she published for Anzac Day in the magazine Woman's World in April 1923.

While the serialised republication of her memoir Thirty Years in Australia had put her in a slightly more secure financial position, Ada remained concerned about her finances and pursued the republication of her other works in her final years. She wrote to Robertson in 1923 that she hoped to be able to leave some money for her daughter, who was also struggling financially. She moved into a nursing home in 1924. She sold Robertson the rights to all of her writing for £100 in 1924, which allowed her to remain at the nursing home until she was eventually forced to move to a private hospital. She suffered another stroke in 1926, leaving her blind and paralysed. She died in Elsternwick of heart failure on 19 July 1926 at the age of 82, and was buried at Brighton Cemetery.

Writing

Fiction

Cambridge's novels have been described as following a similar narrative formula. Most of her stories centre on the romance between a hero and a heroine, and typically end in marriage. Along the way, the narrative creates barriers to their marital happiness, including misunderstandings, changes of heart, moral dilemmas, and illnesses. Cambridge's heroines were generally attractive, morally upstanding, upper-middle class young women with "ladylike" qualities. Her novels often explore the challenges of finding a suitable spouse and the expectations and pressures placed on both men and women in achieving a good marriage. Her writing was often critical of the colonial "nouveaux riche" and the erosion of English values and standards of "good breeding" when it came to finding a spouse. The scholar Debra Adelaide writes that her novels express "the typical anxieties of the Anglo-Australian middle classes".

Scholars have also noted, however, that Cambridge's writing frequently features the use of irony and satire. For instance, her 1898 novel Materfamilias is narrated by a grandmother who gives a biased recounting of her life while remaining unaware of how her manipulative behaviour and self-delusion have evidently afflicted those around her. Tate regards Materfamilias as one of Cambridge's best works, and writes that its usage of irony illustrates "how the domestic novel can be elevated to an art form". Cambridge at times played with her typical narrative structure to subvert her readers' expectations. Many of her novels explore her disillusionment with religion and her views on marriage and the status of women, as well as criticism of society's judgmental nature.

Cambridge's fiction typically presented marriage as something that should be chosen freely. Her romances also suggested, however, that "true love" was not necessarily an essential component of a successful marriage, and that even those who do not truly love their husbands can become dutiful and happy wives. She also suggested that young women might only find the capacity for true love as they matured, after initially marrying for reasons of money or obligation. Some of her later works also criticised the desire of modern women to pursue their own passions at the cost of their duty, and suggested that true happiness would only be found through marriage. Adelaide writes that her work featured an "odd mixture of radicalism and conservatism", including the presence of social humanitarian themes, alongside condemnation of socialism and an ambivalent position on women's rights.

Poetry

In addition to her two early volumes of hymns, Cambridge published three volumes of poetry. Her first poetry collection, The Manor House and Other Poems (1875), contains an assortment of both religious and secular poems, and has been described as influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites. Her next volume of poetry, Unspoken Thoughts, proved controversial; it explores a range of anti-establishment themes including injustice, the nature of God, and sexual expression. Scholars have pointed out that the volume, which Cambridge eventually withdrew from publication, was published the same year that she was admitted to hospital with expectations that she may not survive. Many of the poems from Unspoken Thoughts were included in her 1913 volume The Hand in the Dark. Barton describes The Hand in the Dark as a more measured and coherent exploration of the themes of Unspoken Thoughts, featuring a "calm strength and integrity" that contrasts with the "anguished questionings" of the "urgent, passionate, and contradictory" earlier collection.

While Cambridge's poetry was largely neglected for much of the 20th century, the literary historian H. M. Green praised her poetry in 1961 and compared her work to that of the poets Francis Adams and Bernard O'Dowd. Her poetry, particularly Unspoken Thoughts, has since attracted greater attention for feminist scholars for its radical and "quasi-feminist" themes. The poetry scholar Toby Davidson describes Cambridge as the pioneer of Christian mystical poetry in Australia, noting the theological and liturgical influences on her poetry.

Legacy

Ada Cambridge was a popular and well-regarded writer during her lifetime, and maintained her positive reputation into the 1930s. Writing for an audience largely composed of women, Cambridge was one of the only Australian writers of her era to depict emotional life and romantic relationships. She was described during her lifetime as the leading female novelist of her era, and was called the "doyen of women writers in Australia" upon her death. However, by around the 1930s, her fiction began to be regarded more critically. She was dismissed as an Anglophile interested only in women's affairs. Her biographer Audrey Tate summarises her reputation as being that of a "frail clergyman's wife writing romantic fiction of dubious value". This shift in her reputation has been attributed to the emergence of a nationalist Australian literary genre from the 1890s onwards, which centred around tales of the bush and male heroism.

In the 1970s a resurgence of interest in women's writing from feminist scholars led to a re-evaluation of Cambridge's work. One of the catalysts for this re-evaluation of Cambridge's writing was a 1972 article by Jill Roe, which sparked interest from other feminist scholars. Biographers and scholars began to regard Cambridge's writing as featuring more complexity, radicalism, and subversion than had previously been appreciated. They observed that her work frequently questioned and challenges unjust Victorian social structures. Her biographer Audrey Tate notes her use of irony and experimentation, as well as the anti-establishment sentiment and liberal humanist politics that feature in much of her later work. Several of her novels, as well as her memoir Thirty Years in Australia, were reprinted during the 1980s.

Selected works

Novels

• Up the Murray (1875)
• My Guardian (1878)
• 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)
• A Marked Man (1890)
• Not All in Vain (1891)
• Fidelis (1895)
• A Humble Enterprise (1896)
• Materfamilias (1898)
• Path and Goal (1900)
• 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)
• The Manor House and Other Poems (1875)
• Unspoken Thoughts (1887)
• The Hand in the Dark and Other Poems (1913)

Short story collections

• At Midnight and Other Stories (1897)

Autobiography

• Thirty Years in Australia (1903)
• The Retrospect (1912)

External links

• Template:Internet Archive author
• Template:Librivox author