Vale Elizabeth Morrison

Media historian Elizabeth Morrison has died, aged 89.

Professor Bridget Foley writes: 

Elizabeth Morrison was a print culture historian specialising in 19th-century Australia literature and the press. With a background in librarianship, she located original novels by Ada Cambridge serialised in the Age and edited them for re-publication in the Colonial Texts Series (A Woman’s Friendship, 1988, and A Black Sheep, 2004). Her 1991 PhD thesis in history at Monash University formed the basis of her first monograph, Engines of Influence: Newspapers of Country Victoria, 1840–1890 (MUP, 2005).

She was a lecturer in librarianship and a research fellow in Australian studies before moving to Canberra. While project officer for the Academy Editions of Australian Literature she met Professor John Mulvaney, honorary secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a legendary archaeologist; a late-life romance blossomed and they were happily married until his death in 2016.

I’d known Liz since at least 1999 when she attended the first Australian Media Traditions Conference, and looked for any opportunity to work with her. Meticulous, professional, warm and kind, Liz contributed to, and advised on, A Companion to the Australian Media (ASP, 2014). I remember John’s pride in her and his determination that her biography of David Syme find a publisher (which it did, and was published by Monash University Publishing in 2014). I was chuffed when she appeared on-screen to hear my paper at the 2021 AMT conference, held online due to Covid. In recent years, Liz stewarded the John Mulvaney Fellowship for the academy while downsizing her possessions to avoid leaving a burden for her family.

Restitution Publishing released, in 2023, her final book, A Man of No Mean Talent: Donald Cameron and Australian Colonial Newspaper Fiction. We were looking forward to catching up at the annual Academy dinner in Canberra in November 2024, but Liz withdrew on the day due to a medical complication. She moved back to Melbourne and I didn’t see her again. Liz died in her sleep last Sunday, a few months before turning 90. She has left an impressive body of work, as well as children and grandchildren, and a wide circle of friends and admirers.

Category: Obituaries