Marjorie Barnard

Who was Marjorie Barnard?

Marjorie Faith Barnard AO was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian - and librarian. She went to school and university in Sydney, and then trained as a librarian. She was employed as a librarian for two periods in her life, but her main passion was writing.

Barnard met her collaborator, Flora Eldershaw, at the University of Sydney, and they published their first novel, A House is Built in 1929. Their collaboration spanned the next two decades, and covered the full range of their writing: fiction, history and literary criticism. They published under the pseudonym M. Barnard Eldershaw. Marjorie Barnard was a significant part of the literary scene in Australia between the wars and, for both her work as M. Barnard Eldershaw and in her own right, is recognised as a major figure in Australian letters.