Alison Hoddinott was born in Hobart in 1931 and was educated at the Friend’s School and the University of Tasmania. She won a scholarship to Oxford University in 1954. She has written extensively on the poetry of Gwen Harwood, including The Real and the Imagined World (A&R 1991). She edited Blessed City (A&R 1990), Gwen Harwood’s 1943 letters to Thomas Riddell, which won the Age Book of the Year, and The Present Tense (ETT 1995), Gwen Harwood’s final collection of poetry, which was shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival Award and for the Banjo Award. With Gregory Kratzmann, she co-edited Gwen Harwood’s Collected Poems (UQP 2003). She has published a number of articles on the novels of Charlotte Brontë in the English journal Brontë Studies, and two articles on her family, and on its convict ancestors, in the Papers and Proceedings of the Tasmanian Historical Research Association. Her most recent publication is Idle Talk (Brandl & Schlesinger 2015), an edition of Gwen Harwood’s letters to her and her husband in 1960−1964. She taught for many years in the English Department of the University of New England, specialising in Victorian literature. She retired as a Senior Lecturer in 1996 and lives in Armidale.