AustLit

Jean Turnley, novelist and short story writer, was the wife of Cole Turnley and mother of Beris Campbell (qq.v.). Her parents were Gus and Mary Mullins, farmers at Diggers Rest, who encouraged their four children to read and write. Turnley attended a one-teacher country school and she won her first short story competition when she was seven.

Over her long career Turnley wrote hundreds of stories for magazines and periodicals around the world, including the American magazine, Collier's (or Collier's Weekly, published from 1888 to 1957). She was president of the Victorian branch of the Society of Women Writers in the 1980s. The branch produced two volumes of women's writing: Equal to the Occasion: a scrapbook of vignettes illustrating the life-style of women in Victoria over the last 150 years to celebrate the sesqui centenary of Victoria, 1835-1985; and Women By Themselves: a scrapbook of personal writings by women in Australia since white settlement (1988).