Joan Lindsay was born in Melbourne, where she went to school as a day-girl for a few years at Clyde Girls Grammar, then situated in East St Kilda. Appleyard College, the setting oh her most famous novel Picnic at Hanging Rock, was to some extent based on Clyde Girls' Grammar School. From 1916 to 1919, Joan studied painting at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, Melbourne and exhibited numerous of her watercolor and oil paintings. On Valentine’s Day 1922 she married Daryl Lindsay in London. When her husband was knighted in 1956 and Joan became Lady Lindsay. The Lindsays travelled together in Europe and the USA, Daryl with his paints and Joan with her typewriter. She contributed articles, reviews and stories to various magazines and newspapers on art. She died in December 1984.

This deliciously horrific Australian thriller, set in 1900, could be seen as an anti-picnic cautionary tale.