Born in Blythe Bridge in the Potteries District of England, author and journalist Brenda Little spent her early adult life with 'no real intention to write'. While raising two sons and renovating a two hundred year old house, Little was also busy running an antique business and a health food store.
Little subsequently began a writing career by 'accident' during the 1960s when, at the suggestion of a friend, she submitted an essay to the British magazine Punch. The article was accepted and as a result she continued to contribute humorous articles to Punch as well as finding work as a newspaper columnist writing about local history and intermittently covering the 'Pet's Corner' and 'Gardening' sections.
But it was during the following decade, when spending time convalescing with a broken foot, that Little wrote and published the first of her seven novels, The Chalk Woman (1973). It was also during this time that Little and her husband Philip migrated to Australia, settling in New South Wales in 1972. Following the move, Little returned to journalism contributing articles to Vogue, Vogue Living and Cleo, and also undertaking a long-term stint as a television scriptwriter for the 1970s Australian soap opera, The Young Doctors.
Little published numerous (non-fiction) books covering a variety of subjects such as gardening, herbs and spices, health, astrology and art; with the popular Companion Planting in Australia (1982) running to several editions. She also wrote book reviews for the Australian, was a prodigious editor, and worked as a ghost-writer producing three books for survivors of the Holocaust.
Described as a colourful, 'blithe spirit', Little died suddenly of a heart attack the day after completing the copy edit on her final novel, Josephine and Me (2003).
She lived in Avalon, New South Wales.
