A Woman's Friendship

by Ada Cambridge, Elizabeth Morrison (Editor)

The grand Melbourne Exhibition of 1888 is a most agreeable place for Margaret Clive, a journalist’s wife, and Patty Kinnaird, married to a squatter, to pursue their ‘purely intellectual friendship’ with handsome, widowed and wealthy Seaton Macdonald ... The triangular relationship changes, however, when the women are house guests at Yattock, Macdonald’s magnificent country property - and unadmitted attractions begin to surface.In this gentle satire of class and sexuality, Ada Cambridge opens a window on Melbourne society of the 1880s and illuminates some important issues of the day - reform of dress and diet, the ‘marriage question’, socialism and women’s suffrage.This edition of A Woman's Friendship also contains a short story, The Reform Club , written by Cambridge thirty-one years later.

177 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1889

About the author

Ada Cambridge (21 November 1844 – 19 July 1926), later known as Ada Cross, was an English-born Australian writer.
Overall she wrote more than twenty-five works of fiction, three volumes of poetry and two autobiographical works.[1] Many of her novels were serialised in Australian newspapers, and were never published in book form.
While she was known to friends and family by her married name, Ada Cross, she was known to her newspaper readers as A.C.. Later in her career she reverted to her maiden name, Ada Cambridge, and it is thus by this name that she is known.

Ada Cambridge married the Rev. George Cross in 1870 and immediately sailed for Australia. They lived in various towns in Victoria but finally settled in Melbourne. When her husband wanted to return to England, Ada reluctantly followed him and lived in England again from 1912 to 1917. Upon her husband's death in 1917 she returned to Australia where she remained for the rest of her life.

Selected Bibliography
* Hymns on the Litany (1865)
* Hymns on the Holy Communion (1866)
* The Manor House: and Other Poems (1875)
* My Guardian (Novel, 1877)
* In Two Years' Time (Novel, 1879)
* A Mere Chance (Novel, 1882)
* Unspoken Thoughts (Novel, 1887)
* A Woman's Friendship (Serialised in the Age, 1889; first published in book form in 1988)
* A Marked Man (Novel, 1890)
* The Three Miss Kings (Novel, 1891)
* Not All in Vain (Novel, 1892)
* A Little Minx (Novel, 1893)
* A Marriage Ceremony (Novel, 1894),
* Fidelis (Novel, 1895)
* A Humble Enterprise (Novel, 1896),
* At Midnight: and Other Stories (1897)
* Materfamilias (Novel, 1898),
* Path and Goal (Novel, 1900)
* The Devastators (Novel, 1901)
* Thirty Years in Australia (Memoir, 1903)
* Sisters (Novel, 1904)
* A Platonic Friendship (Novel, 1905)
* A Happy Marriage (Novel, 1906)
* The Eternal Feminine (Novel, 1907)
* The Retrospect (Memoir, 1912)
* The Hand in the Dark: and Other Poems (1913)
* The Making of Rachel Rowe (Novel, 1914)

Reviews

[Anne Fenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now this was fascinating. It’s a short novel told in episodes for publication in The Age newspaper in 1889. The plot involves a friendship with a cause, woman’s suffrage, between two women, Margaret and Patty, and a man, MacDonald. They form a club of three to advance their cause. Of course, events develop, that’s what we follow. Set in Melbourne in its current time , it’s gently funny, so interesting about attitudes, behaviour, daily life, costume, transport, leisure, culture, husbands etc etc.
For today it’s very readable, unfolding at a reasonable pace in each instalment. Writing style is no problem, once the scene is established.
Published in a series of Colonial Texts, forgotten writings, by, would you believe it, a body from the Australian Defence Force in Canberra!

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exceedingly good.