Katharine Susannah Prichard is one of Australia’s greatest novelists. She wrote thirteen novels (including books for children) and four volumes of short stories as well as non-fiction, poetry and drama. She was born in 1884 at Levuka in Fiji, where her father was editor of the Fiji Times. The family later moved to Melbourne, then Tasmania and back again. After leaving school, Katharine Susannah Prichard held several positions as a governess and tutor before travelling to London in 1908. During her years abroad she wrote her first published novel, The Pioneers. She returned to Australia and married Hugo Throssell, V.C., and together they settled on a small property at Greenmount in Western Australia.
Katharine Susannah Prichard’s published works include Black Opal, Working Bullocks, The Wild Oats of Han, Coonardoo, Haxby’s Circus, Intimate Strangers and the goldfields trilogy, The Roaring Nineties, Golden Miles and Winged Seeds. Her autobiography, Child of the Hurricane, was published in 1964, and her last novel, Subtle Flame, in 1967. Katharine Susannah Prichard died in 1969. The biography Wild Weeds and Wind Flowers, by her son Ric Throssell, was published in 1975.