'Although Ada Cambridge is a major writer of the colonial period, she has long been neglected in Australian literary history. Her serial novel 'A Woman's Friendship', published in the Melbourne paper 'The Age' (August-October 1889), was widely read and circulated and, as such, offered a way in the social and gender debates of the time. This paper aims to reflect on Cambridge's ambivalent representation of female characters and gender issues in the 1880s Australian society, oscillating between convergence and divergence with conventions, and between conformism and radicalism.' (Publication abstract)