Born in Australia, Effie Adelaide Rowlands (nee Henderson) settled in England at an early age - she was baptized in Lancashire in 1864. In 1882 she married Abraham Rowlands, four years later she published Margery Daw (1886); the first of almost 200 novels by Rowlands, this early work was published anonymously. The majority of her novels however, appeared under the name Effie Adelaide Rowlands, even though her marriage with Rowlands had ended in divorce in 1894. In 1896 she married the Italian musician Carlo Albanesi, and some of her subsequent novels appear under the name Effie Maria Albanesi.
It is likely that a number of her novels have Australian content (e.g. The Hand of Fate
[1914]is set partly in Australia); however, as very few are held in Australian libraries, it has not yet been possible to determine this aspect of her work. Rowlands also published a biography of her daughter, Meggie Albanesi (1928), a talented young actor who died in 1923, aged 24.
