Manuscript journal of the Tasmanian colonial artist Mary Ann Synnot (Williams), 1859 - 1863

Manuscript journal of the Tasmanian colonial artist Mary Ann Synnot (Williams), 1859 - 1863

Folio ledger book, lacking lower board and backstrip; original cloth covered upper board (heavily stained) and top leather corner (lacking the bottom leather corner); marbled front endpapers; front paste-down with original stationer's label of Thomas Brown, Moorabool Street, Geelong (extremely faded)

Manuscript journal (approximately 240 pages) of Mary Ann Williams (nee Synnot, 1828-1903), daughter of Captain Walter Synnot and wife of Reverend Montague Williams, kept between October 1859 and June 1863 (with two pages of entries for February 1864 at the front of the journal) while visiting her brother-in-law's property in the Wimmera district of Victoria, Geelong, and Melbourne in late 1859, and later in Tasmania, at Westbury and Launceston. Written in ink in an untidy but legible hand, with her marginal vignette sketches, with subjects including Aboriginal implements, people and animals throughout. The journal appears complete in itself, the final few leaves being Mary Ann's list of letters received during 1863. Densely written and packed with sharp observations and descriptions of incidents in her daily life, Mary Ann's journal is a precious primary source document for research into Victorian and Tasmanian colonial society of the mid nineteenth century. It is also one of very few examples of a personal record kept by an Australian female artist or writer to have survived from the pre-1880 period

Held by Monash University Library's Rare Books Collection. Find this item in the Library catalogue.

1 volume : illustrations ; 32 cm

Out of Copyright