Amy Witting

Amy Witting was born Joan Austral Fraser in 1918. She grew up in Annandale, Australia, a suburb of Sydney. Her childhood was marked by a strict Catholic upbringing and a struggle with tuberculosis, a disease that would recur in her early adulthood. Fraser studied languages at the University of Sydney, received her teaching certification, and began working as a schoolteacher, writing only in her free time and only ever under a pen name. The name Amy Witting was derived from a promise Fraser made to herself to never be unwitting and to always be “witting”—both in her life and in her writing career, which was kept separate from her work as a schoolteacher and did not take off in earnest until the late 1970s. Witting published The Visit in 1977, followed by I for Isobel in 1989—a novel described as “exceptionally autobiographical” by those who knew Witting personally. Isobel was followed by a sequel in 1999, and the 2001 publication of Witting’s last book, After Cynthia, preceded her death from complications related to cancer at age 83 by just a few months.