According to a review of her book Songs of Bushland in Australian Town and Country Journal (vol.99 no.2560, 22 January 1919 ), Mollie McNutt was the wife of a bush schoolmaster, who wrote the poems for that book 'from time to time'. She also wrote the lyrics for a song, Silver Wattle, published in the 1930s with music by G. L. Talbot. According to the Victorian School Paper for Grades VII and VIII, October, 1925, Mollie had been a teacher herself, in New South Wales; an article in an Armidale newspaper notes that she began teaching as a pupil teacher at Hillsgrove in 1901, then transferred to Armidale Infants' School, from which she resigned in 1911 to be married. After her death, public school children in New South Wales solicited donations to the sum of £872 17s., which endowed a cot at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children. ('The Mollie McNutt Cot', Armidale Express, 16 July 1920, p.3).
She is listed in Miller, Miller and Macartney and Serle as Mrs Mollie E. McNutt, though none of her works show her as that. On the cover of Songs of Bushland is the statement 'by Mollie McNutt' but the title page shows M. E. McNutt. The Mrs may have come from the fact that the first poem in the book is titled 'To My Husband', and the dedication is to him. However, her writing name does not reflect this. The anonymous review in Australian Town and Country Journal uses the M'Nutt variation of her name, though the apostrophe is reversed, suggesting a typographer's strategy because of the small font size.
Australian Children's Books (ACB) (volume 1), notes that Songs of Bushland contains a thirteen-page section 'For the Little Ones', though this is primarily not a children's book. ACB also states that the author's name on the front cover of this book is 'Mollie the Nutt'. This is incorrect: it is Mollie McNutt.
