Dorothy Cottrell
Australian writer (1902-1957)
Ida Dorothy Ottley Cottrell (16 July 1902 – 29 June 1957) was an Australian writer. Born in Picton, she contracted infantile paralysis as a child and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Cottrell married Walter Mackenzie Cottrell on 23 May 1922. Her first novel, The Singing Gold, was published in 1928. She wrote a story Wilderness Orphan (1936) which was the basis for the feature film Orphan of the Wilderness (1936). She lived for a time in the US and also worked as an artist and cartoonist.
Early life and education
Cottrell was born on 16 July 1902 in Picton, New South Wales, to parents Walter Barwon Wilkinson and Ida Constance. At the age of five, whilst living in Ballarat, she contracted polio, which left her unable to walk and reliant on a wheelchair for the rest of her life. After her parents' separation she spent much of her childhood with relatives in Queensland, living on remote sheep stations. During this time she trained dogs to pull her wheelchair and even modified vehicles so she could drive.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dorothy Cottrell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.