AustLit

'As part of my research to write a fictional memoir of the nineteenth century zoological illustrator Elizabeth Gould, I travelled to the Mitchell Library in Sydney to view her diary, album of plant drawings and other original materials, used in preparation to create lithographs for The Birds of Australia (1840-1848). The essay uses self-reflective writing to explore my responses to interacting with the material archive of this historical subject, and how it helped to fashion her into the narrator of Elizabeth Gould: A Natural History. (Author's abstract)