Mary Gaunt

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Mary Eliza Bakewell Gaunt (February 21, 1861 - January 19, 1942) was an Australian novelist.

Mary was the eldest daughter of William Henry Gaunt, a Victorian county court judge, was born at Chiltern, Victoria. She was educated at Grenville College, Ballarat and the University of Melbourne, where she was one of the first two women students to enroll. She began writing for the press and in 1894 published her first novel Dave's Sweetheart. In the same year she married Dr H. L. Miller of Warrnambool, Victoria. He died in 1900, and, finding herself not very well off, Mrs Miller went to London intending to live by her pen.

She 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), Reflecctions 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 J. R. Essex.

In her later years she lived mostly at Bordighera, Italy. She died at Cannes in 1942. She had no children.

Her brothers Guy and Ernest were both Admirals of the Royal Navy, and Guy later became a Conservative Member of Parliament.