Cirrus@Austlit

Kathleen Dalziel was perhaps best known as a contributor to the Sydney Bulletin. She was born at Durban, South Africa, and came to Australia as a young girl. She spent her childhood on the family farm in north-west Tasmania, then after her marriage moved to Victoria, where she lived for the rest of her life.

Dalziel's early Bulletin poems attracted the praise of notable literary figures such as J. F. Archibald and Mary Gilmore, however, between marriage, raising a family and a decade-long break from writing, it was not really until the mid to late 1920s that she gained wider recognition. Over the years her works appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines, both in Australia and overseas, and some were included in anthologies. She also wrote children's poems for the Victorian School Paper. So, although she published only the one small volume of poetry (Known and Not Held, 1941), during her lifetime her works became well known to readers throughout Australia, including generations of Victorian school children. She was a founding member of the Melbourne P.E.N. Club, and was at various times a member of the Australian Literary Society, and also the Fellowship of Australian Writers.