Daughter of a Wesleyan minister and his Irish wife, Amy Eleanor Mack was born in Port Adelaide, one of thirteen children. Her older sister
Louise Mack (q.v.) and younger sister
Gertrude Mack (q.v.) were also writers. Her father was required by his work to move every three years, so they lived in various places in South Australia and New South Wales. She was educated at Sydney Girls' High School.
Mack worked as a journalist, and was editor of the Women's Page of the
Sydney Morning Herald, 1907-1914, and wrote a number of articles on Australian birds and wildlife. She married Professor
Launcelot Harrison (q.v.) in 1908, and later went with him to Cambridge, where he had a post-graduate research scholarship. During WWI her husband served in the Middle East, and Mack moved to London and worked for two years in the Ministry of Munitions as a public relations officer.
Mack's first book,
A Bush Calendar (1909) was a collection of her nature articles from the
Sydney Morning Herald, and her first children's book,
Bushland Stories, was an attempt to provide information about Australian wildlife through imaginative stories. Her husband died suddenly in 1928, and her writing output slowly declined with her health.
