[4] Jones left school at 19, and in 1888 started her career as a stage actress called Cora Minnett Vane.
She registered herself in the telephone book as a journalist and author, and began writing novels under the names Cora Minnett and Pellew Harker.
[7][2][8] In this world, women enjoy equality with men, and it is regarded as an example of early feminist utopian science fiction.
[7][2] Minnett published a story and poem titled "The Failure" on 16 April 1914 in the Northern Territory Times and Gazette.
[2] Minnett appears to have engaged in conning victims in England by selling them non-existent or wrongly described plots of land in Australia,[7] setting up an office in The Strand.
Walter Robson, a cashier at the Commercial Bank of Australia, loaned her total of £2700, anticipating repayment with profits from her company in 1914.
[9] During the trial, it emerged that Minnett had told the bank manager that she had spent £3000 of money received from Robson to entertain suffragettes, intending to make use of the movement to recruit more emigrant to Australia, as part of her large settlement scheme.