image of person or book cover 7676725752107622495.jpg
Cover image courtesy of publisher.
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 The Wasp and The Orchid : The Remarkable Life of Australian Naturalist Edith Coleman
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

''Have you met Mrs Edith Coleman? If not you must - I am sure you will like her - she's just A1 and a splendid naturalist.'

'In 1922, a 48-year-old housewife from Blackburn delivered her first paper, on native Australian orchids, to the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria. Over the next thirty years, Edith Coleman would write over 300 articles on Australian nature for newspapers, magazines and scientific journals. She would solve the mystery of orchid pollination that had bewildered even Darwin, earn the acclaim of international scientists and, in 1949, become the first woman to be awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion. She was 'Australia's greatest orchid expert', 'foremost of our women naturalists', a woman who 'needed no introduction'.

'And yet, today, Edith Coleman has faded into obscurity. How did this remarkable woman, with no training or connections, achieve so much so late in life? And why, over the intervening years, have her achievements and her writing been forgotten?

'Zoologist and award-winning writer Danielle Clode sets out to uncover Edith's story, from her childhood in England to her unlikely success, sharing along the way Edith's lyrical and incisive writing and her uncompromising passion for Australian nature and landscape. ' (Publication summary)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 2019 .
      image of person or book cover 6401576792682664665.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 432p.
      Description: illus.
      Note/s:
      • Published: 26th February 2019
      ISBN: 9781760784300

Works about this Work

Mapping Forgotten Worlds : A Conversation with Danielle Clode Gillian Dooley (interviewer), 2019 single work interview
— Appears in: Writers in Conversation , August vol. 5 no. 2 2019;
Danielle Clode : The Wasp and the Orchid FL , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 14-20 April 2018;

'The subtitle promises “the remarkable life” of Edith Coleman, but remarkable how? As Danielle Clode tells it, it comes across as remarkable in the sense of noteworthy, rather than extraordinary. Which is fine – by all means, let’s take note – but is there a book in it?' (Introduction)

Danielle Clode : The Wasp and the Orchid FL , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 14-20 April 2018;

'The subtitle promises “the remarkable life” of Edith Coleman, but remarkable how? As Danielle Clode tells it, it comes across as remarkable in the sense of noteworthy, rather than extraordinary. Which is fine – by all means, let’s take note – but is there a book in it?' (Introduction)

Mapping Forgotten Worlds : A Conversation with Danielle Clode Gillian Dooley (interviewer), 2019 single work interview
— Appears in: Writers in Conversation , August vol. 5 no. 2 2019;
Last amended 29 Aug 2019 09:52:15
X