Ethel Pedley

Ethel Pedley
Ethel Pedley's photograph from the author page of Dot and the Kangaroo.
Born	Ethel Charlotte Pedley (1859-06-19)June 19, 1859 Acton, London, England.
Died	Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Cause of death	Cancer
Resting place	Waverly Cemetery, Bronte, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Alma mater	Royal Academy of Music (1882)
Occupation	Author, Musician
Years active	1882-1898

Cover of a 1920 publication of Dot and the Kangaroo

Ethel Charlotte Pedley (19 June 1859 – 6 August 1898) was an Australian author and musician.

A scan of a first edition copy of Dot and the Kangaroo, which included a photograph of Pedley and a copy of her signature.

Pedley's most well-known book is Dot and the Kangaroo, which featured a little girl named Dot who becomes lost in the Australian outback, and is helped to find her way back home by a friendly kangaroo. The illustrations were drawn by Frank P. Mahony.

Pedley was a believer in the conservation of the Australian flora and fauna, and usually wrote her books from this perspective, singling out 'man' as disconnected from nature and the rest of the animals.

Ethel's preface to Dot and the Kangaroo is as follows:

To the children of Australia
in the hope of enlisting their sympathies
for the many beautiful, amiable, and frolicsome creatures
of their fair land,
whose extinction, through ruthless destruction,
is being surely accomplished

External links

• Pedley, Ethel Charlotte (1859 - 1898) Australian Dictionary of Biography
• Works by Ethel C. Pedley at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Ethel Pedley at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald 8 August 1898. Retrieved 6 June 2014.