Caroline Calvert

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Caroline Louisa Waring Calvert (née Atkinson) (February 25, 1834 - April 28, 1872) was an early Australian author and naturalist.

Caroline was born at Oldbury, about three miles from Berrima, New South Wales. Her father, James Atkinson, was the author of an early Australian book, An Account of the State of Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales, published in 1826. He died in 1834 and Miss Atkinson was educated by her mother, Charlotte Barton, the author of Australia's first children's book.. She developed an interest in science and made collections of botanical specimens for botanists William Woolls and Ferdinand von Mueller. She also published two novels, Gertrude the Emigrant (1857), and Cowanda, The Veteran's Grant (1859); various other tales by her appeared as serials in the Sydney Mail.

Her series of natural history sketches "A Voice from the Country" appeared in the Sydney Mail and Sydney Morning Herald in 1860. Other scientific articles were published in the Sydney Horticultural Magazine of 1864-5. In 1870 she married Mr James Snowden Calvert (1825-84), a survivor of Leichhardt's expedition of 1844-5, they had a daughter.

The genus Atkinsonia was named after her, as was also the species Epacris calvertiana.

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