Anne Adams was the daughter of a Scottish mother and an Irish father, a successful pastoralist who left his daughter a legacy of £16,000 when he died in 1862. She was educated at Geelong High School and a private school in St Kilda, Melbourne, where she was an excellent student. After finishing her education she made a tour of Europe with her mother. On her return to Australia Annie Adams met James Glenny Wilson and they married on 21 January 1874 at St Enochs station, near Skipton in Victoria, and moved to New Zealand. Annie Wilson spent the rest of her life at Rangitikei but continued to identify with her birthplace, which provided the inspiration for much of her writing. She chose 'Austral' as her first literary pseudonym, but later wrote under the name of Mrs Glenny Wilson.
Between 1875 and 1880 she had five children and began to write, publishing sketches, verses and short stories. These appeared in the Australasian and in English and American journals, including Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Temple Bar and the Spectator. Later Annie Wilson turned to longer fiction. In her two romantic novels, Alice Lauder (1893) and Two Summers (1900), she explored the difference between old and new worlds by contrasting the manners of women from the colonial élite with their English counterparts.
Annie Wilson died at Lethenty, the family property at Bulls, on 11 February 1930.
(Ormsby, Mary Louise. 'Wilson, Anne 1848 - 1930'.
Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 4 April 2003 URL : http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/)
