Gwen Harwood was born in 1920 in Queensland, Australia and brought up in Brisbane, where she completed a music teacher's diploma. After her marriage in 1945 she moved to Hobart, Tasmania, where her husband held an academic position, and where she developed her interest in the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Her first collection was published in 1963. She produced poems under several other names and identities and, in addition to poetry, wrote a number of opera libretti. Harwood’s anti-authoritarian wit was displayed in prose in her letters. She died in 1995.