Australian author and essayist, Frank Moorhouse, best known for the ‘Edith’ trilogy, has died aged 83.

Born in Nowra in 1938, Frank Moorhouse went on to work in newspapers and arts administration until pursuing a full-time writing career in the 1970s.

Moorhouse won multiple awards for his writing, which his most popular work would be his Edith Trilogy. Consisting of Grand Days, Dark Palace, and Cold Light. The trilogy follows an Australian woman in the League of Nations. In the 1920s and 1930s through to the International Atomic Energy Agency in the 1970s as she struggles to become a diplomat.

He contributed greatly to Australian literature for nearly 50 years. Writing 18 books, and other additional screenplays and essays. Penguin Random House published his last book, The Drover’s Wife, in 2017.

In 1985 he received an Order of Australia for services to literature. Moorhouse was also awarded multiple fellowships which included writer in residence at King’s College Cambridge, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

Meredith Curnow, his publisher at Penguin Random House said: ‘One of the many reasons I will forever adore Frank Moorhouse is his generosity toward new writers. As well as people working in publishing. He loved to sit and learn from younger people. To share his immense wisdom and incredible stories. We will all miss him very much.’