Charlotte Godley
Her letters to her mother, later published, give an invaluable picture – sensitive, sharp, witty – of the challenges, discomforts and pleasures of life in the very early days of the colonial settlement in New Zealand.
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Cherry Raymond
Cherry Raymond was a broadcaster, journalist and opinion-leader, and a household name during the 1960s and 1970s when few women achieved such prominence in the media. Although she particularly campaigned on women’s issues, and often on topics which were controversial or taboo, her interests were broad, and she played an important role in raising the profile of mental illness in New Zealand.
Christine McKelvie Cole Catley
The distinguished writer and journalist Christine Cole Catley was one of New Zealand’s leading independent publishers of the late twentieth century. She was co-founder of the Parents Centre movement in the 1950s, and an influential teacher and shaper of broadcasting policy.
Peggy van Praagh
In 1962, she was invited to become the first artistic director of the Australian Ballet. She was to hold the position until retirement in 1974, returning for a year in 1978.
Lauris Dorothy Edmond
Lauris Edmond was 51 when she began to publish poetry, and quickly won attention as a voice that was both mature and fresh. She is now recognised as one of the best New Zealand poets of the late twentieth century, a compelling voice for women, an exquisite poet of the epiphanic moment, and a writer who left Wellington some of its most distinctive verbal evocations.
Ellen Wright Blackwell
Her book on the plants of New Zealand became a botanical classic running to seven editions over the next 60 years. Several generations of people interested in New Zealand’s native plants were to use it as a constant reference book and a number of professional botanists would credit it with stimulating their original interest.
Daisy May Bates
A self-taught anthropologist, Daisy Bates conducted fieldwork amongst several Indigenous nations in western and southern Australia.
Miles Franklin
Stella Miles Franklin was a leading writer who published under the pseudonyms Miles Franklin and Brent of Bin Bin.
Ruby Langford Ginibi
Ruby Langford Ginibi, of the Bunjalung people of the Northern Rivers Region of New South Wales, was an outstanding activist for Aboriginal rights through her writing and speaking.
Elizabeth Packard
After defending her sanity at trial in 1864, Packard campaigned to ensure the rights of the mentally ill as well as those of married women. She publicized the story of her hospitalization at the hands of her husband in order to prevent the abuse and neglect of others vulnerable before the law.