Lillian Pyke was a teacher and journalist before her marriage to Richard Pyke in 1906 at Toorak. They moved to Monkland, near Gympie in Queensland, where he was employed as an accountant in a railway construction camp. They had three children there. In 1914 Richard Pyke committed suicide, and Lillian returned to Melbourne with her children. In order to support them she returned to writing.
She wrote children's books as well as three novels for adults, with most of her stories influenced by her experience of Queensland railway construction camps or her involvement in education. Most had 'an improving intention'. The school stories emphasised fair play and honourable sporting behaviour, and reflected the code of the Girl Guide and Boy Scout movements. She also wrote A Guide to Australian Etiquette, which was first published in about 1919, with reissues in 1931, 1945, and, with modernised text, in 1960. Her interests included the Esperanto movement, under the influence of her brother-in-law, J.G. Pyke, who was president of the Melbourne Esperanto Society for many years. Her novel, A Wife by Proxy, contains Esperanto themes and was translated into that language.
Pyke died of renal disease in 1927.
(Major source : Australian Dictionary of Biography )
