AustLit

Isabella Maunsell wrote over fifty children's stories for the Queenslander between 1882 and 1891. Yet despite being such a prolific author, she appears to have attracted little attention within contemporary literary circles, and little is known of her life. Research suggests that she was one of five children born to William Cross and his wife Margaret Jane (nee Macdonald), who, during the mid-nineteenth century, lived in the Lansdowne River district, near Port Macquarie, in northern New South Wales. She married Vero Maunsell (1839-1906), an Irish immigrant from Limerick, in Queensland in 1875, and then appears to have lived in the Bundaberg region until after her husband's death in 1906, when she moved to Toowoomba. Pugh's Almanac for 1884 lists her as a teacher at Walla Provisional School (near Bundaberg). However, it is unclear whether she was a school teacher by profession, or whether she held only a brief appointment. Her nephew, George Vero Maunsell Turner (1882-1952), was a noted Sydney barrister. Further biographical details remain to be established.