11 Facts About Ethel Pedley

Ethel Charlotte Pedley was an English-Australian author and musician.

Ethel Charlotte Pedley was born on 19 June 1859 at Acton, near London.

Ethel Pedley was the daughter of Frederick Pedley and his wife Eliza, nee Dolby.

Ethel Pedley was trained by her aunt, the famous contralto Charlotte Sainton-Dolby, at her Vocal Academy.

Ethel Pedley returned to Sydney in 1882, and began teaching singing and the violin.

In 1896 Emmeline Woolley and Ethel Pedley visited London and persuaded the Associated Board of the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music to extend their examinations to the Australian colonies.

Ethel Pedley was appointed the solo representative of the Royal Academy of Music for New South Wales.

Ethel Pedley's only published 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.

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

Stricken with cancer, Ethel Pedley died on 6 August 1898 at the Darlinghurst home of her companion Emmeline Woolley at the age of 39.

Ethel Pedley was buried in the Anglican section of Waverley Cemetery.