CROSS, ZORA BERNICE MAY (1890-1964), writer, was born on 18 May 1890 at Eagle
Farm, Brisbane, daughter of Ernest William Cross, a Sydney-born accountant, and
his wife Mary Louisa Eliza Ann, née Skyring, whose parents were early settlers at
Moreton Bay. Zora inherited literary aspirations from both parents: a strong sense
of poetic mission from her mother, and a strain of Celtic fantasy from her father,
the son of an Irish printer. She was educated at Gympie and Ipswich Girls' Grammar
School, and from 1905 in Sydney at Burwood Superior Public School and Sydney
Girls' High School. In 1909-10 she attended the Teachers' College, Sydney. She
started primary teaching but left the service to give birth to a daughter who
died. On 11 March 1911 she married Stuart Smith, an actor, but refused to live
with him and the marriage was dissolved on 10 September 1922. The child of a
further mysterious love affair Norman Garvin (b.1914) was adopted later by Zora's
de facto husband David McKee Wright, editor of the 'Red Page' of the Bulletin;
they had two daughters.
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Zora Cross was, among other things, a poet and author of children’s verse. She wrote for the Brisbane Daily Mail as a freelance journalist, and was drama critic for the magazines Green Room and the Lone Hand.
The daughter of Australian-born parents, accountant Ernest William Cross and his wife Mary Louisa Eliza Ann (née Skyring), Zora Cross was educated in Sydney from 1905. She began work as a primary school teacher, but left the profession to give birth to a daughter who died as an infant. She married actor Stuart Smith in 1911, but insisted upon living separately. The marriage was dissolved in 1922. Zora gave birth to a son, Norman Garvin, in 1914, after a ‘mysterious love affair’ (ADB), and later had two daughters – Davidina and April – to her de facto husband, Bulletin ‘Red Page’ editor David McKee Wright. The eldest, Davidina, predeceased her mother in 1941.
Zora’s first book of poems, A Song of Mother Love, was published in Brisbane in 1916. That same year she attempted publication of her first novel, on an Aboriginal theme, but was unsuccessful. In 1917 she published a second collection of poetry, Songs of Love and Life, comprising sixty love sonnets: ‘the first sustained expression in Australian poetry of erotic experience from a woman’s point of view’ (ADB). A number of poems were published in the Bulletin. The Lilt of Life, published in 1918, ran along similar lines, but the inspiration behind the poems – Zora’s relationship with David Wright, who had four sons to Margaret Fane – was the stuff of scandal. Zora also wrote verse for children, including The City of Riddle-mee-ree in 1918, and Elegy on an Australian Schoolboy, in memory of her soldier brother, in 1921.
When David Wright died suddenly in 1928, Zora supported herself and her three children by working as a freelance journalist (particularly for the Brisbane Daily Mail), teacher of elocution, actor and drama critic. She attempted to write a trilogy of novels on a Roman theme, but never completed the work. She died of heart disease in the home she had shared with Wright at Glenbrook, in the Blue Mountains, and was buried at Emu Plains.
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c. 1930 - c. 1960
Career in journalism active
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Australian Women's Register