艾达·剑桥

诗人的传记

阿达·剑桥(1844年11月21日- 1926年7月19日)，后来被称为阿达·克罗斯，英国作家。总的来说，她写了超过25部小说，三卷诗集和两部自传作品。她的许多小说在澳大利亚报纸上连载，但从未以书的形式出版。朋友和家人都知道她的姓艾达·克罗斯，但报纸读者都知道她是A.C.。后来在她的事业中，她又恢复了她的娘家姓艾达·坎布里奇，因此她以这个名字为人所知。艾达出生在诺福克的圣日耳曼，是托马斯辛和亨利·剑桥的第二个孩子，他是一位绅士农民。她接受家庭教师的教育，这是她厌恶的经历。她在一本回忆录中写道:“我可以诚实地肯定，我从来没有学过任何现在被认为值得学习的东西，直到我把它们都学完了，开始自己寻找。”最后我确实上了几个月的寄宿学校，就当时而言，这是一所非常好的学校，但它并没有在我的脑海中留下持久的印象。”(《回顾》第四章)事实上，对她的智力发展贡献最大的是一位未婚的姑妈。1870年4月25日，她嫁给了乔治·弗雷德里克·克罗斯牧师，几周后乘船前往澳大利亚。她于8月抵达墨尔本，惊讶地发现这是一个成熟的城市。 Her husband was sent to Wangaratta, then to Yackandandah (1872), Ballan (1874), Coleraine (1877), Bendigo (1884) and Beechworth (1885), where they remained until 1893. Her Thirty Years in Australia (1903) describes their experiences in these parishes. She experienced her share of tragedy, including the loss of children to whooping cough and scarlet fever. Cross at first was the typical hard-working wife of a country clergyman, taking part in all the activities of the parish and incidentally making her own children's clothes. Her health, however, broke down, for a number of reasons including a near-fatal miscarriage and a serious carriage accident, and her activities had to be reduced, but she continued to write. In 1893 Cross and her husband moved to their last parish, Williamstown, near Melbourne, and remained there until 1909. Her husband went on the retired clergy list at the end of 1909 with permission to operate in the diocese until 1912. In 1913 they both returned to England, where they stayed until his death on 27 February 1917. Ada returned to Australia later that year, and died in Melbourne on 19 July 1926. She was survived by a daughter and a son, Dr K. Stuart Cross. A street in the Canberra suburb of Cook is named in her honour. While Cambridge began writing in the 1870s to make money to help support her children, her formal published career spans from 1865 with Hymns on the Litany and The Two Surplices, to 1922 with an article 'Nightfall' in Atlantic Monthly. According to Barton, her early works 'contain the seeds of her lifelong insistence on and pursuit of physical, spiritual and moral integrity as well as the interweaving of poetry and prose which was to typify her writing career.Cato writes that 'some of her ideas were considered daring and even a little improper for a clergyman's wife. She touches on extramarital affairs and the physical bondage of wives'. In 1875 her first novel Up the Murray appeared in the Australasian but was not published separately, and it was not until 1890 with the publication of A Marked Man that her fame as a writer was established.However, despite regular good reviews, there were many who discounted her because she did not write in the literary tradition of the time, one that was largely non-urban and masculine, that focused on survival against the harsh environment. She was first president of the Women Writers Club and honorary life-member of the Lyceum Club of Melbourne, and had many friends in the literary world including Grace 'Jennings' Carmichael, Rolf Boldrewood, Ethel Turner, and George Robertson.