Vale Barbara Ker Wilson AM
by Robin Appleton HLM
Before her time spent in Queensland, as remembered in the October 2020 Gatherings, the late Barbara Ker Wilson spent many years in publishing in Sydney.
In 1978, she was a founding member of The Editors (later to become Society of Editors NSW then Editors NSW) and was elected the first President of The Editors at its inaugural meeting in May 1979. Barbara was later awarded one of the society’s earliest Honorary Life Memberships and, in 1983, the society nominated Barbara to serve on the Literature Board of the Australia Council.
Two of Barbara’s notable works, Jane Austen in Australia: A Novel and The Willow Pattern Story, were published in these earlier decades spent in New South Wales, before she moved north later in the 1980s.