Eileen Louise Soper
New Zealand journalist, writer and Girl Guide commissioner
New Zealand journalist, writer and Girl Guide commissioner
An influential Auckland citizen with a reputation as a compelling speaker, writer, administrator and social activist
Among the Press staff ‘Miss E.’ was known for her professional thoroughness, enthusiasm, vitality, generosity and patience. She held firm convictions about the role women should play in society, and set a sterling example by being associated with nearly 250 social welfare and women’s organisations during her career.
In 1962, she was invited to become the first artistic director of the Australian Ballet. She was to hold the position until retirement in 1974, returning for a year in 1978.
Lauris Edmond was 51 when she began to publish poetry, and quickly won attention as a voice that was both mature and fresh. She is now recognised as one of the best New Zealand poets of the late twentieth century, a compelling voice for women, an exquisite poet of the epiphanic moment, and a writer who left Wellington some of its most distinctive verbal evocations.
Her book on the plants of New Zealand became a botanical classic running to seven editions over the next 60 years. Several generations of people interested in New Zealand’s native plants were to use it as a constant reference book and a number of professional botanists would credit it with stimulating their original interest.
A self-taught anthropologist, Daisy Bates conducted fieldwork amongst several Indigenous nations in western and southern Australia.
Stella Miles Franklin was a leading writer who published under the pseudonyms Miles Franklin and Brent of Bin Bin.
Ruby Langford Ginibi, of the Bunjalung people of the Northern Rivers Region of New South Wales, was an outstanding activist for Aboriginal rights through her writing and speaking.
After defending her sanity at trial in 1864, Packard campaigned to ensure the rights of the mentally ill as well as those of married women. She publicized the story of her hospitalization at the hands of her husband in order to prevent the abuse and neglect of others vulnerable before the law.