Chauncy, Nan (1900-1970), was an Australian children’s author. Nearly all her books are set in the rugged Tasmanian countryside and shoreline where she lived most of her life. They emphasize the natural beauty of the environment. Chauncy was also one of the first authors to present sympathetic portraits of the Aboriginal people of Tasmania. Mathinna’s People (1967) is a fictional reconstruction of the lives of the Aboriginal inhabitants of western Tasmania after the arrival of European settlers.
Chauncy won the Australian Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Award three times, beginning with Tiger in the Bush (1958), about the now-extinct Tasmanian tiger. It was followed by Devil’s Hill (1959), which focuses on the animal called the Tasmanian devil, and Tangara (1961), portraying the friendship between a white girl and an Aboriginal girl.
Nancen Beryl Masterman was born on May 28, 1900, in Northwood, Middlesex, England, and settled in Tasmania with her family when she was 13. She married Anthony Chauncy in 1938. She wrote more than a dozen children’s books, beginning with They Found a Cave (1949). She died on May 1, 1970.
