Flora Shaw
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The Honourable Dame Flora Shaw, Lady Lugard DBE |
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|---|---|
| Born |
Flora Louise Shaw 19 December 1852 Woolwich, England, UK |
| Died | 25 January 1929 (aged 76) Surrey, England, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Other names | Lady Lugard |
| Occupation | Journalist, novelist |
| Spouse(s) | Sir Frederick Lugard |
Dame Flora Louise Shaw, Lady Lugard DBE (born 19 December 1852 – 25 January 1929) was a British journalist and writer. She is credited with having coined the name "Nigeria".
Flora Louisa Shaw was born at 2 Dundas Terrace, Woolwich, the fourth of fourteen children, the daughter of an English father, Captain (later Major General) George Shaw, and a French mother, Marie Adrienne Josephine (née Desfontaines; 1826–1871), a native of Mauritius. She had nine sisters, the first and last dying in infancy, and four brothers. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Frederick Shaw, third baronet (1799–1876), of Bushy Park, Dublin, and a member of parliament from 1830 to 1848, regarded as the leader of the Irish Conservatives. Her paternal grandmother, Thomasine Emily, was the sixth daughter of the Hon. George Jocelyn, and granddaughter of Robert, first earl of Roden.
Between 1878–86 Shaw wrote five novels, four for children and one for young adults. In her books, young girls are encouraged to be resourceful and brave, but in a traditional framework, acting in support of "gentlemanly" fathers and prospective husbands rather than on their own behalf. Shaw's ideology is both sexually conservative and Imperialist.
Her first children's novel, Castle Blair, was translated into several languages and continued to be extremely popular in the UK and US well into the 20th century. It was based on her own Anglo-Irish childhood experiences. Charlotte Yonge recommended it along with works of "some of the most respected and loved authors available in late Victorian England" as "wild ... attractive and exciting". The critic John Ruskin called Castle Blair "'good and lovely, and true'".
Shaw also wrote a history of Australia for children, The story of Australia (London: Horace Marshall, 1897) as part of the Story of the Empire series.
She began her career in journalism in 1886, writing for the Pall Mall Gazette and the Manchester Guardian. She was sent by the Manchester Guardian newspaper as the only woman reporter to cover the Anti-Slavery Conference in Brussels. She became Colonial Editor for The Times, making her the highest paid woman journalist of the time. In this connection the paper sent her as a special correspondent to Southern Africa in 1892 and in 1901, and to Australia and New Zealand in 1892, partly in order to study the question of Kanaka labour in the sugar plantations of Queensland. She also made two journeys to Canada, in 1893 and 1898, the second of which included a journey to the gold diggings of Klondike.
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