Poems and recollections of the past by Fidelia Hill, 1840

Fidelia S T Hill , Poems and recollections of the past, Sydney, 1840.

Fidelia Hill (nee Munkhouse) was born August 1794 in Pontefract, Yorkshire, England and died on 21 July 1854 in Launceston, Tasmania. She arrived in South Australia in the Buffalo in 1836.

Shortly after their wedding, Fidelia and her husband Robert Keate Hill (a lieutenant in the Royal Navy), moved to Jamaica where her uncle - Arthur Savage - was a merchant and coffee planter. In the 1830's they moved to South Australia where they lived from 1836 to 1838. After her husband died Fidelia married again and moved to Tasmania.

In the Preface Fidelia says touchingly -- the poems having been written during seasons unfavorable to composition, of severe domestic calamity, and bodily suffering. Several of them having been suggested by the singular reverses of fortune, which it has of late, been the writer's portion to experience. And with regard to her subscribers --.... she (Fidelia) is led to indulge a hope, that as the first who has ventured to lay claim to the title of Authoress, in Sydney, she will be favoured with the continuation of patronage and support. Sydney, May 1840.

The titles of some of Fidelia Hill's poems in this book are-

• Recollections, "Yes, South Australia! Three years have elapsed,"
• Lines to the Memory of Col. Light etc. etc.
• And some other poems
• Adelaide and other poems of South Australia
• To the Memory of Colonel Light, Late Surveyor General of South Australia