Person

Meredith, Louisa Ann (1812 - 1895)

Born
20 July 1812
Birmingham, England
Died
21 October 1895
Collingwood, Victoria, Australia
Occupation
Author and Botanical artist

Summary

Louisa Meredith was a keen naturalist who studied the plants (aquatic and land), insects and fish of Tasmania's east coast and was made an honorary member of the Tasmanian Royal Society. She was also a talented illustrator winning numerous national and international awards for her wildflower drawings. Louisa Meredith is perhaps best known for being a prolific writer of poetry, journals and even some fiction. She has at least twelve publications to her name, six of which detail the flora and fauna of Australia, especially Tasmania. In 1884 the Tasmanian government awarded her a pension for her 'distinguished literary and artistic services'.

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Details

Chronology

1832
Career position - First book of poems and illustrations released
1839
Life event - Migrated to Australia (Sydney)
1840
Life event - Moved to Oyster Bay in Tasmania
1842 - 1891
Career position - Seven books of poems published
1844
Career position - Notes and Sketches of New South Wales published in London
1850
Career position - My Home in Tasmania, During a Residence of Nine Years published
1858
Life event - Moved to Orford in Tasmania
1866
Award - Medal at the Melbourne Exhibition - for her wildflower illustrations

Archival resources

Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science

  • Australian Botanists - Biographies, MS 064; Adolph Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science. Details

Published resources

Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation Exhibitions

  • McCarthy, Gavan; Morgan, Helen; Smith, Ailie; van den Bosch, Alan, Where are the Women in Australian Science?, Exhibition of the Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation, First published 2003 with lists updated regulary edn, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, 2003, https://eoas.info/exhibitions/wisa/wisa.html. Details
  • McCarthy, Gavan; Smith, Ailie; Moje, Christine; Rigby, Rebecca, The Study of Australian Eucalypts, eScholarship Research Centre, 2013, http://www.eoas.info/eucalypts/index.html. Details

Books

  • De Vries-Evans, Susanna, Pioneer Women, Pioneer Land: Yesterday's Tall Poppies (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1987), 280 pp. Details
  • Forsyth, Holly Kerr, Remembered Gardens: Eight Women and Their Visions of an Australian Landscape (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2006), 273 pp. Details
  • Meredith, Louisa, Notes and Sketches of New South wales, During a Residence in that Colony from 1839-1844 (London: John Murray, 1844). Details
  • Meredith, Louisa Anne, My Home in Tasmania: During a Residence of Nine Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 300 pp. Details
  • Musgrave, A., Bibliography of Australian entomology, 1775-1930: with biographical notes on authors and collectors (Sydney: Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales, 1932), 380 pp. Details
  • Norton, Leonie, Women of Flowers: Botanical Art in Australia from the 1830s to the 1960s (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2009), 126 pp. Details
  • Olsen, Penny, Collecting Ladies: Ferdinand von Mueller and Women Botanical Artists (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2012), 248 pp. Details
  • Rae-Ellis, Vivienne, Louisa Anne Meredith: a Tigress in Exile (Hobart: St David's Park Publishing, 1990), 273 pp. Details
  • Wrigley, J.; and Fagg, M., Eucalypts: a Celebration (Crows Nest Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2010), 344 pp. Details

Book Sections

  • Johnston, Judith, 'The "Very Poetry of Frogs": Louisa Anne Meredith in Australia' in Natural Eloquence: Women Reinscribe Science, Barbara Gates and Ann Shteir, eds (Madison, USA: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997). Details
  • Lawson, Elizabeth, 'Louisa Anne Meredith, 1812-1895' in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Details
  • Moyal, Ann, 'Collectors and illustrators: women botanists of the nineteenth century' in People and Plants in Australia, Carr, D. J. and Carr, S. G. M., eds (Sydney: Academic Press, 1981), pp. 333-56. Details
  • O'Neill, Sally, 'Meredith, Charles (1811-1180) and Louisa Ann (1812-1895)' in Australian dictionary of biography, volume 5: 1851 - 1890 K-Q, Douglas Pike, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1974), pp. 239-240. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A050274b.htm. Details

Journal Articles

  • Ellis, Vivienne Rae, 'Louisa Anne Meredith - a conservationist to her 19th century bootlaces', Habitat, 2 (1) (1974), 8-12. Details
  • Grimshaw, Patricia; and Standish, Ann, 'Making Tasmaina home: Louisa Meredith's colonizing prose', Frontiers: a journal of women's studies, 28 (1) (2007), 1-17. Details
  • Johnston, Judith, '"Woman's Testimony": Imperialist Discourse in the Professional Colonial Travel Writing of Meredith and Traill', Australian and New Zealand Studies in Canada, 11 (1994), 34-55. Details
  • Swann, Margaret, 'Mrs. Meredith and Miss Atkinson, Writers and Naturalists', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 15 (1929), 14-29. Details
  • Swann, Margaret, 'Mrs. Meredith and Miss Atkinson, Writers and Naturalists', Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, 15 (1929), 1-14. Details

Resources

Reviews

  • Norton, Leonie, Women of Flowers: Botanical Art in Australia from the 1830s to the 1960s (2009)
    Cohn, Helen M., Historical Records of Australian Science, 21 (2), (2010), 292-4, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR10012. Details
  • Meredith, Louisa Anne, My Home in Tasmania: During a Residence of Nine Years (2010)
    Olsen, Penny, Historical Records of Australian Science, 22 (2), (2011), 312-3, https://doi.org/10.1071/HR11013. Details

See also

  • Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Technology in Australia 1788-1988, Online edn, Australian Science and Technology Heritage Centre, Melbourne, 3 May 2000, http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/index_m.html. Details
  • Maiden, J. H., 'Records of Tasmanian Botanists', Papers and proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 1909 (1909), 9-29. Details

McCarthy, G.J.

Created: 20 October 1993, Last modified: 2 March 2018

EOAS ID: biogs/P001913b.htm

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"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260