Louisa Atkinson's Nature Notes

Louisa Atkinson's Nature Notes
Author: Penny Olsen
Publisher: National Library of Australia
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2015-04-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0642278601

Nineteenth-century writer and journalist Louisa Atkinson was a remarkable woman. She was the author, at the age of 23, of the first novel penned by a native-born woman to be published in Australia. She was also a keen naturalist, whose close observations and detailed knowledge of the natural world found expression in the articles she wrote for Sydney newspapers. Yet Louisa Atkinson also created many artworks of the flora and fauna around her home in the Blue Mountains, most of which went unpublished during her lifetime. Presented in the style of a sketchbook, and organised by season, Louisa Atkinson’s Nature Notes teams Louisa’s beautiful drawings and paintings of Australian plants, animals and birds with short extracts from her nature writings. The book includes an essay about Louisa Atkinson’s life and milieu by nature and science writer Penny Olsen. In Louisa Atkinson: Nature Notes Louisa’s beautiful sketches of Australian plants and wildlife are brought together with her articles from the Sydney newspapers in a reimagining of one of her sketchbooks. The result is a season-by-season account of nature in the Australian bush, observed by one who had a great respect and love for even the smallest of creatures. Perfect for dipping into, Louisa Atkinson’s Nature Notes is a nostalgic coffee-table book for anyone who loves art, nature or history. An ideal Mother’s Day or Christmas gift. The selection of Louisa’s writings was edited and chosen by natural history author, Penny Olsen, who has also contributed a short lively biography at the back of the book.

Worlding the south

Worlding the south
Author: Sarah Comyn
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 590
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1526152878

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This collection brings together for the first time literary studies of British colonies in nineteenth-century Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific Islands. Drawing on hemispheric studies, Indigenous studies, and southern theory to decentre British and other European metropoles, the collection offers a groundbreaking challenge to national paradigms and traditional literary periodisations and canons by prioritising southern cultural networks in multiple regional centres from Cape Town to Dunedin. Worlding the south examines the dialectics of literary worldedness in ways that recognise inequalities of power, textual and material violence, and literary and cultural resistance. The collection revises current literary histories of the ‘British world’ by arguing for the distinctiveness of settler colonialism in the southern hemisphere, and by incorporating Indigenous, diasporic, and south-south perspectives.

Feather and Brush

Feather and Brush
Author: Penny Olsen
Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2022-05-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 148631418X

Feather and Brush traces the history of bird art in Australia – from the simple engravings illustrating accounts of the earliest European voyages of discovery to the diversity of artwork available today. It explores the early European approach, in which naval draughtsmen, officers, convicts, settlers, naturalists, artists and scientists alike contributed both to the art and the science of ornithology, through to a wealth of contemporary artists who feature birds in their works. This book contains more than 400 images, representing the work of 158 artists; some well-known, others published for the first time. The illustrations have been selected for their interest, whether ornithological, historical or artistic. They range from classical to quirky, decorative to functional, monumental to intimate. Together they demonstrate the rich history of Australian bird art, as it evolved in Europe and Australia, and continues today, along with the trends and technologies of the times. This second edition includes new and revised chapters, and features about 200 new artworks, including some by Indigenous artists. Cultural sensitivity Readers are warned that there may be words, descriptions and terms used or referenced in this book that are culturally sensitive. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this book contains images and names of deceased persons.

Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia

Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia
Author: Willa McDonald
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2023-10-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3031317890

This book traces the beginnings of literary (narrative) journalism in Australia. It contributes to evolving international definitions of the form, while providing a glimpse into Australia’s early press history and development as a nation. The book comprises two parts. The first examines the forerunners of literary journalism before and during the establishment of a free press, including the letters, diaries and journals of the early colonists, as well as sketches published in the first magazines and newspapers. The book asks if these were “reporting” when there was no thriving press until well into the 19th century -- many were written by women and convicts whose voices otherwise went unheard. The second part examines the first expressions of literary journalism in forms more recognisable today, covering topics as varied as homelessness in Melbourne, the Queensland trade in Pacific Islander labour, and Australia’s involvement in overseas wars, particularly the Boer War. The resulting cultural history reveals important milestones in the development of Australia’s press and literature, while demonstrating the concerns unveiled in colonial literary journalism still resonate in Australia in the 21st century.

Southerly

Southerly
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 502
Release: 1981
Genre: Australian literature
ISBN:

Vols. for 1939-1944 include the Annual report of the Australian English Association; v. for 1945-1946 include the Annual report of the Sydney Branch of the English Association.

Collecting Ladies

Collecting Ladies
Author: Penny Olsen
Publisher: National Library Australia
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2013
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0642277532

Around 1870, Ferdinand von Mueller, the greatest Australian botanist of the nineteenth century, began to advertise in several newspapers across Australia for 'lady' plant collectors. This was at a time when women typically had little recourse to science, or contact with men outside their circle of friends, making Mueller's network of ladies quite extraordinary. Collecting Ladies profiles 14 of Mueller's coterie of women collectors. Included are Fanny Charsley, Louisa Atkinson, Annie Walker and Ellis Rowan for whom Mueller made time to assist in pursuit of their own passions. He identified the plants they painted and provided letters of introduction to publishers and scientists. Together, these ladies produced some of the most beautiful books and botanical art to come out of Australia in the nineteenth century, covering all the Australian colonies.

Topsy-turvy World

Topsy-turvy World
Author: Kirsty Murray
Publisher: National Library Australia
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2012
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0642277494

To the first Europeans who came to Australia, everything seemed topsy turvy. Christmas was in the summer and trees shed their bark but not their leaves. And the animals were bizarre. There was a bird that laughed like a donkey and a type of greyhound that bound along on its hind legs like a hare. There was an animal in Tasmania whose nocturnal screeches sounded like the devil and a river creature that had a duck's bill at one end and a beaver's tail at the other. The Europeans had never seen anything like these animals before and gave them names similar to those of the European creatures they already knew. They drew and painted odd pictures of them, showing they did not understand the animals' habits. In one illustration, a wombat is standing on its back legs and in another a Tasmanian tiger is wrestling with a platypus of the same size.