Verna Coleman
Verna Susannah Coleman (née Scott) was an Australian biographer and librarian who lived from 13 September 1925 to 4 November 2011. She was born in Sydney, the daughter of Jack and Ruby Scott, and studied at Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta, and the University of Sydney. After earning an arts degree, she worked as a librarian at the Mitchell Library and at University College, Canberra. From 1950 to 2005 she wrote literary reviews for many journals.
Coleman’s biographies focused on overlooked figures in literature and politics. Her first biographical subject was Miles Franklin, whom she had helped as a young librarian; her book Miles Franklin in America: Her Unknown (Brilliant) Career (1981) explored Franklin’s feminist and union activism in Chicago. She also wrote The Last Exquisite (1990), a portrait of Australian expatriate poet and Great War novelist Frederic Manning who built a controversial reputation in London, and Adela Pankhurst: The Wayward Suffragette (1996), the only full biography of Emmeline Pankhurst’s daughter, who moved from the Communist Party to Australia First.
At the time of her death, Coleman was working on studies of Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth von Arnim. She was married to writer and politician Peter Coleman, and they had three children: Tanya (a lawyer and wife of Peter Costello), Ursula (a children’s writer), and William (an economist).
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:42 (CET).