The Australian Women's Register

Alice Trevenen Rosman was born in Kapunda, South Australia on the 18 of July 1882, to parents Trevenen Rosman and Alice Mary Bowyer (née Varley). As a child, Alice showed early signs of creativity and a talent for story-telling, which she used to entertain her younger sister Mary. She and her sister attended Catholic primary and secondary schools, though they were not Catholic themselves. During her schooling years Alice wrote numerous short stories and poems, some of which were published in newspapers. She finished school in 1899. By 1901, she was editing the magazine The Young Queen, published by the Adelaide branch of the Girls’ Realm Guild, which she had established.

Between 1906 and 1911, Alice worked as a journalist for various publications, including the Gadyfly, the Bulletin (for which she used the pseudonym ‘Rosna’), the Daily Herald, Lone Hand, the Australasian, Sydney Mail and Steele Rudd’s Magazine.

In 1911 Alice and her sister Mary moved to England. While Mary taught piano at a girl’s school, Alice continued her work writing for publications. Between 1915 and 1920 she wrote for the British Australasian, and between 1920 and 1927 was the assistant editor of Grand Magazine. During these years, Alice also published her first novels, using the pseudonym Alice Grant Rosman. The novels were Miss Bryde of England (1915) and The Tower Wall (1916), and they went largely unnoticed. Her first successful novel was The Window, published in 1926; twelve editions were printed in five months, and it was translated into several languages.

In 1927, Alice retired to focus on her novels, and published seventeen stories between then and 1939. Many of these sold near 100, 000 copies, even during the Depression. Her birthplace Australia featured in The Back Seat Driver (1928) and The Sixth Journey (1931), as well as her first two novels. Her most successful markets – particularly for her romance fiction – were those outside of Britain: Canada and the United States of America. Alice Rosman’s work was known for its easy style and humour, and was often called by reviewers as ‘light fiction’.

Alice Rosman died in Highgate, England, on 20 August, 1961.