Louisa Anne Meredith was a naturalist, botanist, writer, and painter in nineteenth-century Tasmania. She published a number of important books on early settler life and natural history in Eastern Australia and is regarded as an important early illustrator and writer. In 1839, at the age of twenty-seven, Meredith immigrated to Australia from Birmingham with her new husband, leaving behind an established career in England as a published writer and illustrator. Though Australia offered a rich field for her lifelong interest in natural history and botany, for much of her life she regretted the sophisticated artistic society and the opportunities she had left behind.

Born Louisa Anne Twamley in Birmingham on 20 July 1812, she was the only child of somewhat mismatched parents. Her mother, Louisa Anne (Meredith) Twamley, came from a genteel, solid, and rising middle-class background; she had married late, and somewhat against the family's wishes, her childhood sweetheart, Thomas...