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Verna Susannah Coleman (née Scott; born 13 September 1925 – 4 November 2011) was an Australian biographer of international reputation, whose work was characterised by stylish and readable writing, meticulous research, and a gripping narrative skill. She concentrated on neglected aspects of expatriate literary and political figures, and the social, political and literary milieus in which they lived. Her books on novelists Miles Franklin and Frederic Manning, and activist Adela Pankhurst, have proved particularly valuable to scholars of feminist history, and of First World War literature. Her book on Adela Pankhurst is the only biography of this polarising figure, about whom it had been suggested that a biography could never be written. == Life and work == Verna Susannah Coleman was born in Sydney, the second daughter of Jack and Ruby Scott, and educated at Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta and the University of Sydney. After graduating in Arts, she worked as a librarian in the Mitchell Library (the specialist Australian collection of the State Library of New South Wales) and in the library of the University College, Canberra. She wrote literary reviews for various journals from 1950–2005, but her first biographical subject was novelist Miles Franklin, whom she had assisted as a young librarian in the Mitchell Library.〔 ''Miles Franklin in America: Her Unknown (Brilliant) Career'' covered Franklin’s previously largely unknown political career with the feminist and union movements in Chicago. The next biography ''The Last Exquisite'' explored the life of the Australian expatriate poet and Great War novelist Frederic Manning, who left Sydney at the age of 21 to become a controversial literary figure in London. The final biography, ''The Wayward Suffragette'', was a study of Adela Pankhurst, daughter of the famous British activist Emmeline Pankhurst. Coleman documented her extraordinary career following her emigration to Australia, where she became prominent at both ends of the political spectrum, moving from the Communist Party and to the far right Australia First movement.〔〔 At the time of her death Verna Coleman was working on was a study of the emergence of Modernism in fiction, as illustrated by the careers of the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield and Katherine's Sydney-born cousin, Elizabeth von Arnim.〔 Verna Coleman was married to writer and politician Peter Coleman, and had two daughters, Tanya, who became a lawyer and later wife of Deputy Liberal Leader Peter Costello, Ursula, a children's writer, and a son William, who is an economist.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Verna Susannah Coleman」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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