Louisa Atkinson

Caroline Louisa Waring Atkinson was an early Australian writer, botanist and illustrator. While she was well known for her fiction during her lifetime, her longterm significance rests on her botanical work. She is regarded as a groundbreaker for Australian women in journalism and natural science, and is significant in her time for her sympathetic references to Australian Aborigines in her writings and her encouragement of conservation.

Louisa, as she was generally known, was born on her parents property Oldbury, Sutton Forest, about three miles from Berrima, New South Wales, and was their fourth child. Her father, James Atkinson, was the author of an early Australian book, An Account of the State of Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales, published in 1826. He died in 1834, when Louisa was onlyweeks old. Louisa was a somewhat frail child with a heart defect, and so was educated by her mother, Charlotte Barton, herself the author of Australias first childrens book, A Mothers Offering to her Children.

Source: Wikipedia