Colenso, William (1811 - 1899)

Summary

William Colenso went to New Zealand in 1834 to work for the Church Missionary Society as a printer/missionary, tasked with printing a Māori language translation of the New Testament. His enthusiasm for studying the local flora was spurred by meeting Allan Cunningham (1833), Charles Darwin (1835) and Joseph Hooker (1841). During the 1840s Colenso made a number of exploratory journeys into the interior of the North Island. He contributed over a hundred papers to scientific journals, and was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society and the Royal Society, London

Details

Chronology

1834

Life event - Migrated to New Zealand

1865

Career position - Fellow, The Linnean Society of London (FLS)

1886

Career position - Fellow, Royal Society, London (FRS)

Archival resources

Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales

• William Colenso - Records, 1838 - 1841, ML MSS 3109; Mitchell and Dixson Libraries Manuscripts Collection, State Library of New South Wales. Details

Published resources

Books

• Bagnall, A. G.; and Peterson, G. C., William Colenso: His Life and Journeys (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2012), 496 pp. Details
• Moon, Paul, The Voyagers: Remarkable European Explorations of New Zealand (Auckland (N.Z.): Penguin Books, 2014), 251 pp. Details
• St George, Ian, Colenso's Collections: Including the Unpublished Work of the Late Bruce Hamlin on William Colenso's New Zealand Plants held at Te Papa (Wellington : New Zealand Native Orchid Society, 2009), 412 pp. Details
• St George, Ian, Wallace, Eloise and Wells, Peter, Gazing With a Trained Eye: Fifteen Aspects of William Colenso (Napier: MTG Hawke's Bay, 2013), 176 pp. Details
• Wells, Peter, The Hungry Heart: Journeys with William Colenso (Auckland: Vintage, 2011), 467 pp. Details

Edited Books

• St George, Ian ed., William Colenso: his life and journeys (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2012), 496 pp. Details

Journal Articles

• Colenso, W., 'Manibus parkinsonibus sacrum: a brief memoir of the first artist who visited New Zealand, together with several little-known items of interest extracted from his journal', Transactions and proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, 10 (1878), 108-34. Details
• Earp, C., 'Cataloguing the new world: Colenso's Glossarium botanicum: novae zelandiae', Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 48 (1) (2018), 1-20. Details
• Endersby, J., '"From having no herbarium." Local knowledge versus metropolitan expertise: Joseph Hooker's Australasian correspondence with William Colenso and Ronald Gunn', Pacific science, 55 (4) (2001), 343-58. Details
• Grapes, Rodney, 'The 1855 earthquake: accounts from two missionaries, William Colenso and Arthur Stock', Journal of the Historical Studies Group, Geoscience Society of New Zealand, 66 (2020), 32-48. Details
• Hamlin, B. G., 'The bryophyte collections of William Colenso in the Dominion Museum, Wellington', New Zealand Journal of Botany, 9 (1971), 695-98. Details
• Heywood, Janet, 'Teachers Born, Not Made: Trans-Tasman Links from Colenso to Maiden', Australian Garden History, 25 (4) (2014), 11-5. Details
• Nathan, Simon, 'The scientific achievements of William Colenso FRS', Colenso: a monthly newsletter and historical review, 8 (5) (2017), 14-21. http://www.colensostudy.id.au/Newsletters/Year%202017/eCol%205%20May%2017.pdf. Details
• St George, Ian, 'William Colenso 1811-1899, Victorian Polymath', ENNZ: Environment and Nature in New Zealand, 7 (2/1) (2012), 41-7. Details

Resources

• VIAF - Virtual International Authority File, OCLC, https://viaf.org/viaf/69861851. Details
• Wikidata, http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q2624463. Details
• 'Colenso, W (1811-1899)', Trove, National Library of Australia, 2009, https://nla.gov.au/nla.party-802885. Details

Reviews

• Bagnall, A. G. and Peterson, G. C., William Colenso: His Life and Journeys (2012)
  Priestley, R. K, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 43, (2013), 256-7. Details
• St George, Ian, ed., William Colenso: his life and journeys (2012)
  Ross, Cathy, Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies, 2 (2), (2014), 207-9. Details

See also

• Grapes, Rodney, 'Historical note on travertine in the Wairarapa', Journal of historical studies, Geoscience Society of New Zealand, 78 (2024), 32-7. Details