Eliza Dunlop
Eliza Dunlop
Eliza Hamilton Dunlop - the poet
Eliza was born in 1796 in County Armagh, Ireland, the daughter of Honour Solomon Hamilton, a puisne judge of the Supreme Court of India. She first married James Law, an astronomer but he later died. A daughter, Georgina, was born to them in 1816 at Coleraine, Ireland.
She married David Dunlop in 1823, and died on the 20th June 1880 in Sydney. She is buried next to David in the Wollombi Cemetery.
Eliza was a lyric writer and a student of the aboriginals, and contributed to the literary life of the Hunter circle. Some of her early verse were sentimental in nature e.g. "The Aboriginal Mother" was written in 1838 and it expressed her dismay and outrage at the Myall Creek Massacre.
Her works were published in such magazines as the "Dublin Penny Journal", the "Australian", and the "Maitland Mercury".
Her Australian lyrics were set to music by Isaac Nathan, and from 1842 they appeared in his "Australian Lyrics" series. A volume of her collected works "The Vase, Comprising Songs For Music and Poems" remains in manuscript in the Mitchell Library.
She was one of the few people at the time to appreciate the literary worth of aboriginal songs and poetry. She translated aboriginal verse into English and recorded the aboriginal dialect in Wollombi.
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