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Danielle
About the Book
Summary
In 1922, a 48-year-old housewife from Blackburn delivered her first paper, on native Australian orchids, to the Field Naturalist’s 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 is all but forgotten. 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
Paperback, 432 pages, published March 27th 2018
Picador Australia ISBN 1760554286
Category: Biography & True Stories
Biography: science, technology & medicine
About the Author
Biography
Danielle Clode is a zoologist and award-winning author. She grew up in Port LIncoln in South Australia, studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, worked as a zookeeper and scientific interpreter, in exhibition design and academia, and spent many years as a technical editor and writing teacher. She has written twelve books, including Voyages to the South Seas and In Search of the Woman who Sailed the World. Her books have won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for non-fiction, Whitley Award for popular zoology and the Federation of Australian Writer's Award for Best Nonfiction. They have also been shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia, National Biography award, the Nib Literary award and Adelaide Festival awards. She lives in the Adelaide Hills on a bush block with an abundance of native orchids (and their pollinating wasps). Her latest book is on koalas.
Interviews
Listen to Danielle discuss the book and how it was written
Reviews
- 'This book is both biography and memoir: a masterpiece of archival detection, intricate orchestration, and vivid recreation...brought to life with vivid, elegant prose and acute insight.' Judges' report, National Biography Award
- ‘a fascinating and entertaining read’ The Planthunter
- ‘an eloquently written testament to one of our foremost women scientists by a writer who is a formidable contributor to the field in her own right’ Anne Jenner
- ‘Coleman’s housewifely amateur status, whereby the blending of DIY anecdote and scientific rigour in her own garden became a hallmark of her style, could qualify her as something of a retro hero for our times’ Gregory Day author of A Sand Archive
- ‘Clode’s book shines a light on how a “housewife from Blackburn” without training, institutional support or the internet achieved “more than some professional academics in their entire careers”‘ Megan Backhouse
- ‘a very informative and entertaining book, a must-read to appreciate Edith Coleman’s contribution to our knowledge and to nature writing and to appreciate and enjoy Danielle’s refreshing writing style’ Australian Orchid Foundation
- ‘anyone with an interest in Australian women writers from the past will enjoy this book, as will nature enthusiasts…a be-ribboned hardback beauty’ Theresa Smith
- ‘a delightful book about a truly remarkable woman’ Anne Rinaudo