Louisa Atkinson's Nature Notes
National Library of Australia, Louisa Atkinson

Nineteenth-century writer and journalist Louisa Atkinson was a remarkable woman. She was the author, at the age of 23, of the first novel penned by a native-born woman to be published in Australia. She was also a keen naturalist, whose close observations and detailed knowledge of the natural world found expression in the articles she wrote for Sydney newspapers. Yet Louisa Atkinson also created many artworks of the flora and fauna around her home in the Blue Mountains, most of which went unpublished during her lifetime.

Presented in the style of a sketchbook, and organised by season, Louisa Atkinson's Nature Notes teams Louisa's beautiful drawings and paintings of Australian plants, animals and birds with short extracts from her nature writings. The book includes an essay about Louisa Atkinson's life and milieu by nature and science writer Penny Olsen.