Agnes Giberne

Artist's impression of midnight on Saturn from Giberne's popular astronomy book Sun, Moon and Stars

Agnes Giberne (19 November 1845, Belgaum, India – 20 August 1939 Eastbourne, England) was a prolific British author who wrote fiction with moral or religious themes for children and also books on astronomy for young people.^[1]

Educated by governesses in Europe and England after her father Major Charles Giberne retired from service in India, Agnes Giberne started publishing didactic novels and short stories with improving themes under her initials A.G., some of it for the Religious Tract Society. Later she used her full name for her fiction, for her well-received works on astronomy and the natural world, and for her biography of the children's writer Charlotte Maria Tucker. Most of her writing was done before 1910.

Giberne was an amateur astronomer who worked on the committee setting up the British Astronomical Association and became a founder-member in 1890. Her popular illustrated book Sun, Moon and Stars: Astronomy for Beginners (1879), with a foreword by Oxford Professor of Astronomy, Charles Pritchard, was printed in several editions on both sides of the Atlantic, and sold 24,000 copies in its first 20 years. Later she wrote a book called "Among the Stars" which, as Giberne explains in the Introduction, is a version of "Sun, Moon and Stars" for younger children. It is about a boy called Ikon who is very interested in the stars. He meets a Professor who explains more about the stars and solar system to Ikon.

Writing online

• Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) by Various at Project Gutenberg
• The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 by Various at Project Gutenberg
• The World's Foundations or Geology for Beginners

References

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Chapman, Allan (1998). The Victorian amateur astronomer : independent astronomical research in Britain, 1820-1920. Chichester: Wiley published in association with Praxis Pub., Chichester. ISBN 9780471962571.