Percy Fritz Rowland was born and raised in London. He studied literature at Oxford, earning his Final Honours in Classics in 1893. After teaching briefly in Ireland and England, he accepted an invitation to move to Sydney to become tutor to a son of Sir James Reading Fairfax. In 1899-1900, he taught at Christchurch Boys' High School and also lectured at Canterbury College, University of New Zealand. He returned to Sydney in 1901 and wrote a book on Australia, The New Nation (London: Smith, Elder, 1903). He returned to England and worked as a teacher before accepting the post of headmaster of the Townsville Grammar School in 1905. He remained in this position, also teaching literature and languages at the school, until 1938.
Rowland also contributed fiction and journalism to the colonial press. From 1933 to 1940 he regularly wrote short, humorous essays for The North Queensland Register, most of them printed in the weekly column, 'Essays in Brief.' After retiring from the Townsville Grammar School, he spent a year visiting England and other parts of Europe, and he recounted his experiences there in numerous travel essays. When he returned to Australia Rowland settled first in Brisbane and then in Sydney, where he died in 1945.
