Amanda Shaw nee Cormack was born in Redfern, Sydney in 1861, the daughter of Alexander and Ellen Cormack. She married Alfred Moss Shaw, a chartered accountant in 1881 and had a son, Cyril Dunstan Shaw (q.v.), born in Sydney in 1888 and a daughter, Marion Clare, possibly born overseas. At some time after 1888 they moved to New Zealand. In 1900 they went to Vancouver, British Columbia before taking up residence in Pasadena, California in 1939. Amanda Shaw published a number of poems in the United States and died there in 1941. N. H. Poyitt (1959) remembered her as 'a most lovable and gentle character - at times a visionary - and was particularly interested in humanity and the study of nature in its widest sense.'
(Source: Foreword by N. H. Poyitt, Sydney in Cyril Dunstan Shaw and Amanda Shaw Christmas Trees and Other Verses (1959): 3).
