Eleanor Dark was born in 1901 and educated in Sydney. She is one of Australia’s most highly regarded writers of the 1930s and ’40s.

Dark began writing in her childhood and contributed verse, short stories and articles to various magazines. Her first novel, Slow Dawning, was published in 1932. A further nine novels followed: Prelude to Christopher (1934), Return to Coolami (1936), Sun Across the Sky (1937), Waterway (1938), The Little Company (1945), Lantana Lane (1959), and the trilogy of historical novels The Timeless Land (1941), Storm of Time (1948) and No Barrier (1953).

Dark also wrote short fiction, essays, radio scripts and poetry. She was married to Eric Dark, a medical doctor and leftist social thinker. She died in 1985, and Varuna, her house in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, is now a writers’ centre.