The letters of Sarah Elizabeth Jackson (1910-1922)

Abstract

‘My sister was a wonderful woman’. So wrote George Canning Jackson on 7 February 1964. His sister, Sarah Elizabeth Jackson (known to friends and family by her second name, Elizabeth), had died of consumption on 14 January 1923, aged thirty-two. Canning Jackson was writing to Dr Helen Mayo, to whom he sent all the letters written by Elizabeth that he had been able to find. These letters were later deposited in the Rare Books and Special Collections section of the Barr Smith Library in the University of Adelaide, and are here presented in this volume with an introduction by Barbara Wall. Elizabeth had a remarkable influence on the young men and women of Adelaide, especially those connected with the University of Adelaide. Her exceptional personality, her extraordinary powers of thinking and communicating, her thoughtfulness, her devotion to the causes of women and children, her passion for redressing wrongs, her wit and delight in nonsense all shine through these letters, and help us to understand the outstanding impact and influence she had on her contemporaries.