Born: 20 July 1812, United Kingdom
Died: 21 October 1895
Country most active: Australia
Also known as: Louisa Twamley

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hidden women of history: the Australian children’s author who captured the bush – before May Gibbs’ Australiana empire

Lauren A. Weber, University of Wollongong and Sara Fernandes, The University of Melbourne

May Gibbs is a household name in Australia. Her most famous book, Tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, published in 1918, has never been out of print. Chances are you have read her work, or had it read to you. You’ll almost certainly have seen her personified native flora illustrations, which these days adorn everything from tea towels to pyjamas.

But have you heard of her predecessor, Louisa Anne Meredith? Like Gibbs, who began to publish in the decades following Meredith’s death in 1895, she drew her literary inspiration from the Australian landscape and crafted her own “brand” in its image.

Unlike Gibbs, though, Meredith’s illustrations were naturalistic. She rendered native Australian flora and fauna as characters for children’s literature, arguably beginning this tradition. But she didn’t “cutesify” them, or give them human features.

As researchers, we believe Meredith’s work for children should be recognised today for its innovations in genre: blending science writing, travel writing, poetry, and fairy tale. It is also anchored in a desire to shape the Australian child into the ideal young colonialist, by framing the land as unoccupied and in need of European care and management.

Dedicated to her craft

Louisa Anne Meredith (born Twamley in 1812) was an author and illustrator, born to a precariously middle-class family in Birmingham. Her father, Thomas Twamley, was a hard-working corn miller and dealer. Louisa’s mother (who shares her name) married him much to the dismay of her prominent family, the Merediths. They were descended from Welsh nobility.

At 22, Twamley’s first collection, Poems (1835), was positively received. English critic Leigh Hunt sang her praises in his 1837 poem, Blue-Stocking Revels, or The Feast of the Violets:

Then came young Twamley,
Nice sensitive thing,
Whose pen and whose pencil
give promise like spring.

By her mid-20s, Twamley had a handful of books in print under her maiden name, as well as a series of prints, sketches, paintings, colour plates and miniatures. She was entirely dedicated to her craft. Her fresh style of publishing original poems alongside accomplished naturalistic illustrations was something new.

Tasmanian life, for English readers

Twamley’s accomplishments were numerous by the time she married her maternal cousin, Charles Meredith. The couple emigrated to Australia in 1839. Meredith’s first book published from the colony, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales (1844), offered readers a “small fund of information on common every-day topics relating to these antipodean climes”. Louisa’s prose was accompanied by her original illustrations of colonial life.

By 1840, she settled in Tasmania and made the island her chief literary concern. She published a series of books depicting Tasmanian life, intended for readers there and back in England. In addition to her writing, Louisa was an active conservationist, as a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

While Meredith is largely remembered for her botanical illustrations and travel writing, she was prolific as a children’s writer. She published a range of books for children set in Tasmania, created from her colonial perspective. Public knowledge of her contributions to Australian children’s literary history is scarce outside Tasmania.

Meredith’s writing for children includes Loved and Lost! The True Story of a Short Life (1860), Grandmamma’s Verse Book for Young Australia (1878), Tasmanian Friends and Foes, Feathered, Furred, and Finned (1880), and Waratah Rhymes for Young Australia (1891).

Her work found young readers in both Australia and England. Her writing often dramatises this connection. Waratah Rhymes, for example, features a dedication in which she signs off from London in 1891 “to the young Colonists of to-day”, inviting their “warm welcome”.

Meredith’s contribution to the history of Australian children’s literature rests in her desire to write an account of “island life” for the white Australian colonial child. On the one hand, she reconfigured familiar European genres, such as the adventure novel (she was a fan of Gulliver’s Travels) and fairy tale. On the other, her aesthetic was distinctively colonial, expressed through Tasmanian fauna and flora.

In these books, the settler child is positioned as inquisitor and mini colonialist. Their discovery of the landscape through fictional encounters positions them to craft the nation in their image.

They reflect the “recurring narratives of nation-building” identified by Goorie and Koori critic and poet, Evelyn Araluen, as typical of Australian children’s literature. Araluen actively dismantles those narratives in her Stella prize-winning collection, Dropbear.

‘Cutesifying the bush’ vs naturalism

There is a striking resemblance between the works and interests of Meredith and Gibbs, who was also a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Yet there are also significant differences.

Meredith was interested in science. She wanted to render scientific concepts legible for young readers by, as she explained in Our Wild Flowers (1839), giving “a little pleasant information, without any difficult terms, or unexplained names”.

While Gibbs had her own successful career as a botanical illustrator, in her writing for children she concocted a magic formula for cutesifying the bush. Her style exemplifies what Araluen calls “intricate forms of kitsch”. Where Meredith’s illustrations for children take inspiration from naturalists such as John Gould, Gibbs puts bums on gumnuts and reins on seahorses.

While their aesthetics are very different, the work of both Meredith and Gibbs reflects a settler-colonial view of the environment that aims to domesticate the bush and manage land.

Meredith does this by importing the British-colonial apparatus of taxonomy, scientific vocabulary and botanical illustration, to order and explain a landscape perceived as being both wild and ripe for cultivation.

Many scholars, including Araluen, have argued Gibbs’ work embodies some of the worst aspects of colonisation. Her imagery and narrative, argues childhood researcher Joanne Faulkner, “reimagined the bush as a ‘home’ for colonizers, essentially ‘indigenising’ them in the image of white gumnut babies”.

These national emblems, embraced by many non-Indigenous Australians, were crafted on stolen land.

Exporting Australia’s children’s stories

In 1884, the Tasmanian government awarded Meredith a pension of £100 (the equivalent of around A$17,000 today) for “distinguished literary and artistic services” to the island.

Since Meredith, Australian children’s books and media have become lucrative exports. Typically, they sell an optimistic image of the sun-drenched “lucky country” to local and international audiences.

Meredith was cannily attuned to the importance of trading a desirable image of her colonial setting. She referenced Australia’s “sunny clime” and “fertile hill[s] and glade” in Waratah Rhymes.

Both Meredith and Gibbs were successful in the business of their writing, explicitly considering their work’s marketability. Meredith had her own monogram branding. She advertised the availability of Grandmama’s Verse Book for international distribution.

Gibbs commissioned a set of Gumnut Babies postcards, anticipating what would become a merchandising empire (the royalties support the works of The Northcott Society and Cerebral Palsy Alliance). It now includes crockery, bedspreads, plushies, pyjamas, stationery and more.

Last year, the Royal Society of Tasmania established the Louisa Anne Meredith Medal to be awarded every four years to a “person who excels in the field of arts or humanities, or both, with outstanding contributions evidenced by creative outputs”.

The Australian children’s literary market is just as internationally saleable as it was in Meredith’s time. Today, the global phenomenon of Bluey continues her legacy of charming children (and adults) around the world through personified Australian animals.

Lauren A. Weber, Lecturer in Literature, Language and Literacy, University of Wollongong and Sara Fernandes, Lecturer in English and Theatre Studies, The University of Melbourne

The following is excerpted from The Dictionary of Australian Biography by Percival Searle, published in 1949 by Angus and Robertson and republished by Project Gutenberg.

MEREDITH, LOUISA ANNE (1812-1895), miscellaneous writer, daughter of Thomas Twamley, was born near Birmingham, on 20 July 1812. She was educated chiefly by her mother, and in 1835 published a volume, Poems, which was favourably reviewed. This was followed in 1836 by The Romance of Nature, mostly in verse, of which a third edition was issued in 1839. Another volume was published in the same year, The Annual of British Landscape Scenery, an account of a tour on the Wye from Chepstow to near its source at Plinlimmon. Shortly afterwards Miss Twamley was married to her cousin, Charles Meredith (q.v.). They sailed for New South Wales in June 1839, and arrived at Sydney on 27 September. After travelling into the interior as far as Bathurst, Mrs Meredith returned to the coast and lived at Homebush for about a year. Towards the end of 1840 Mrs Meredith went to Tasmania, and an interesting account of her first 11 years in Australia is given in her two books, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales (1844), reprinted at least twice, and My Home in Tasmania (1852).
For some years Mrs Meredith lived in the country. In 1860 she published Some of My Bush Friends in Tasmania. The illustrations were drawn by herself, and simple descriptions of characteristic native flowers were given. In the following year an account of a visit to Victoria, Over the Straits, was published, and in 1880 Tasmanian Friends and Foes, Feathered, Furred and Finned. This went into a second edition in 1881. In 1891, in her eightieth year, Mrs Meredith went to London to supervise the publication of Last Series, Bush Friends in Tasmania. She died at Melbourne on 21 October 1895 and was survived by children. Other publications by her are listed in Serle’s Bibliography of Australasian Poetry and Verse, and Miller’s Australian Literature. Mrs Meredith was the author of two novels, Phoebe’s Mother (1869), which had appeared in the Australasian in 1866 under the title of Ebba, and Nellie, or Seeking Goodly Pearls (1882). Mrs Meredith took great interest in politics and frequently wrote unsigned articles for the Tasmanian press. This was no new thing for her as in her youth she had written articles in support of the Chartists. When she visited Sydney in 1882, Sir Henry Parkes told her that he had read and appreciated her articles when a youth. After her husband’s death she was granted a pension of £100 a year by the Tasmanian government.
Mrs Meredith was tall and of commanding presence. Her poetry is no more than pleasant verse, but she had a true feeling for natural history and was a capable artist. Many of her books were illustrated by herself. Her volumes on New South Wales, Tasmania, and Victoria in the 1840s and 50s, will always retain their value as first hand records.

This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Australasian Biography: Comprising notices of eminent colonists from the inauguration of responsible government down to the present time. [1855-1892] by Phillip Mennell, F.R.G.S., published by Hutchinson & Co., 25 Paternoster Square and 1892. The text was reproduced via Project Gutenberg.

Meredith, Louisa Anne (née Twamley), daughter of Thomas Twamley, of Hamptead, near Birmingham, where she was born on July 20th, 1812, was chiefly educated by her accomplished mother, and at an early age wrote verses and practised art with ardour and success. In 1833 she published an octavo volume of “Poems with Illustrations” (Tilt), the latter being etchings on copper from her own original drawings. The book was most favourably reviewed, and the novelty of a girl-poet being also artist and engraver excited considerable interest. Her “Romance of Nature” was a beautiful and costly volume in verse and prose, with hand-coloured plates from her own drawings—the 3rd edition published in 1839 (Tilt). “Our Wild Flowers” told the story of the year in a narrative form, with many poems introduced, the plates hand-coloured from the author’s drawings. “A Tour in South Wales” and “An Autumn on the Wye” (Tilt) were illustrated with engravings after David Cox, Cattermole, etc. On April 18th, 1839, Miss Twamley married at Old Edgbaston Church, Birmingham, her cousin, Charles Meredith, and accompanied him on his return to Australia. Her “Notes and Sketches of New South Wales,” published in Murray’s “Home and Colonial Library,” was one of the most popular volumes of that excellent series. It was followed, some years after, by “My Home in Tasmania” (Murray), with landscape illustrations by the Bishop of Tasmania (Dr. Nixon) and the author. “Over the Straits” (Chapman & Hall) was the narrative of a visit to Melbourne and the goldfields in 1856. ” Lost” was the short life of a pet bird, told in poem and picture. In 1860 appeared “Some of my Bush Friends in Tasmania,” published by Day & Sons, a large and elaborate work on the flora of the colony, with numerous coloured plates from the author’s drawings, and original poems and prose. “Ebba,” a novel, first appeared as a serial in the Australasian, then was published by Tinsley. “Grandmamma’s Verse-Book for Young Australia,” poems for children on local subjects, was printed in Hobart for the author. “Tasmanian Friends and Foes, Furred, Feathered and Finned,” is also a book for young people, with coloured plates from the author’s drawings (1880: Marcus Ward). In recognition of her life of scientific, artistic and literary work in the colony, Mrs. Meredith was long since elected an honorary member of the Tasmanian Royal Society, and was granted by the Government a pension of £100 a year. Prize medals have been awarded to her for botanical drawings of Tasmanian subjects, in the Exhibitions of London, 1862; Melbourne, 1866 and 1881; Sydney, 1870 and 1875; and Calcutta, 1884. A second series of “Bush Friends in Tasmania” is now in the press—Mrs. Meredith having made the voyage home, after an absence of fifty-one years, for the purpose of publishing her last book.

This biography has been shared from The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation, published by the Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Louisa Meredith was a keen naturalist who studied the plants (aquatic and land), insects and fish of Tasmania’s east coast and was made an honorary member of the Tasmanian Royal Society. She was also a talented illustrator winning numerous national and international awards for her wildflower drawings. Louisa Meredith is perhaps best known for being a prolific writer of poetry, journals and even some fiction. She has at least twelve publications to her name, six of which detail the flora and fauna of Australia, especially Tasmania. In 1884 the Tasmanian government awarded her a pension for her ‘distinguished literary and artistic services’.

Chronology
1832
Career position – First book of poems and illustrations released
1839
Life event – Migrated to Australia (Sydney)
1840
Life event – Moved to Oyster Bay in Tasmania
1842 – 1891
Career position – Seven books of poems published
1844
Career position – Notes and Sketches of New South Wales published in London
1850
Career position – My Home in Tasmania, During a Residence of Nine Years published
1858
Life event – Moved to Orford in Tasmania
1866
Award – Medal at the Melbourne Exhibition received for her wildflower illustrations