Author(s): Bernice Barry

Local Books

In December 1836, Georgiana Molloy received an unexpected letter from a stranger in London. Captain James Mangles asked her to collect specimens and seeds of the native plants of Taalinup, where she was living with her family, on Wadandi Pibelmen country. During the last six years of her life, they exchanged letters and she sent him three exquisite collections from Taalinup and Undalup (Augusta and Busselton). They were the highest quality specimens British botanists had ever received from Western Australia. She was self-taught but her dried wildflower specimens are still studied in world herbariums. She died in 1843 aged thirty-seven, having received no payment or formal recognition for her scientific achievements.'A Lady's Pen' provides the first complete, unedited transcription of the long extracts Mangles kept from her letters. Today, they're the only significant, first-hand source of information about her botanical work. Chapters on the writing, the collecting and the research help to peel back the historical filters that today's readers encounter, and an account of Mangles' own intriguing life chimes to the voice that's been missing from their long-distance conversation. But the plants of WA's southwest are the main characters here. Their incredible journeys across oceans and through time are supplemented by the first comprehensive list of the species Georgiana Molloy collected.