Frances Lysnar

Frances Brewer Lysnar (1864–1925) was a New Zealand traveller and writer and the first New Zealand woman to be made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1913.

Biography Lysnar was born in 1864 in Auckland the eldest daughter of William Dean Lysnar and Frances (Fanny) Sarah Lysnar (née Brewer). She was known as 'Gypsy'.

Fanny Lysnar suffered from a heart condition and in 1889 Lysnar accompanied her mother on a trip to England for treatment.

In 1915 Lysnar travelled to India to the Mukti Mission for child widows and other outcast women and children set up by social reformer Pandita Ramabai. She did not return to New Zealand until 1918. During the war she travelled to France and to the United Kingdom where she assisted the war effort by working in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force convalescent camp at Hornchurch. After her time in India she continued to support the Mukti Mission by giving lectures in many places including California, Agra, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Lysnar died in Melbourne in 1925 while on a fundraising visit for the Mission.