- Born
- 4 December 1883
Levuka, Fiji - Died
- 2 October 1969
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Summary
Prichard was born in Fiji, later moving with her family to Melbourne where she attended South Melbourne College. After working as a governess, she began a career as a journalist and travelled to London - with a letter of introduction from Alfred Deakin - to work for the Melbourne Herald. In 1915, she won the Hodder and Stoughton Novel Competition (Australasian Section) for her first novel, The Pioneers. Prichard married the Gallipoli veteran and VC recipient, Hugo (Jim) Throssell, and they finally settled in the Perth suburb of Greenmount. She was a founding member of the Australian Communist Party, also campaigning against conscription and war and, much later on, for nuclear disarmament. Her best-known novels are The Black Opal (1921), Working Bullocks (1926), Coonardoo (1928) and Intimate Strangers (1937). She also wrote two autobiographical works, Why I am a Communist (1956) and Child of the Hurricane (1963).