The biographer has a strong presence within this account, and in many instances, she writes of herself within the context of Edith’s story and experiences. Part biographical, part speculation, and part social history, The Wasp and The Orchid is also the story of how Danielle pieced together the puzzle that was Edith Coleman’s life. Who was she, and why had her work faded into obscurity? Almost twenty years later, Danielle has pieced together what little is known about Edith’s personal life, scoured the archives for her work, tracked down family members, visited past residences, and produced a remarkable book about a woman who solved a mystery of naturalism that confounded even Charles Darwin. What a wonderful book this is to include in my Australian Women Writers Challenge for this year – a book about a forgotten Australian woman writer! From an early encounter in her career with the work of Edith Coleman, scientist and writer Danielle Clode, hung on to a fascination with naturalist Edith Coleman. 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.
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? She was 'Australia's greatest orchid expert', 'foremost of our women naturalists', a woman who 'needed no introduction'.Īnd yet, today, Edith Coleman has faded into obscurity. 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. Over the next thirty years, Edith Coleman would write over 300 articles on Australian nature for newspapers, magazines and scientific journals. In 1922, a 48-year-old housewife from Blackburn delivered her first paper, on native Australian orchids, to the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria. 'Have you met Mrs Edith Coleman? If not you must - I am sure you will like her - she's just A1 and a splendid naturalist.'
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