Oriana Wilson

Oriana Fanny Wilson, (née Souper; c. 1874 – 25 April 1945) was a British naturalist and humanitarian who received the Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services during the First World War. Her husband was the polar explorer Edward Adrian Wilson.

Early life Oriana Souper was born in Bradfield, Berkshire, or 1876 have been claimed but her birth was registered in 1874 and she was christened at Bradfield on 18 October 1874 as the oldest child of Fanny Emmeline and Francis Abraham Souper, a clergyman and headmaster of Bradfield College. When she was twelve, her mother died, which required her to care for the household.

Before her marriage, she worked as a matron at a prep school in Cheltenham.

Naturalist work Reverend George Seaver described Wilson as "a good field naturalist and blest with a quick and lively observation", saying that she, like her husband, had a particular affinity for birds.

In 1914, Leiper and Atkinson named a cestode genus after her, Oriana, with the type species of the genus as Oriana wilsoni. However, Oriana was recognised as a synonym of Tetrabothrius, so the species was renamed as T. wilsoni.

Later life and death During the First World War, Wilson worked to provide comforts to New Zealand troops in Britain. She was awarded the Commander of the British Empire in the 1918 New Year Honours in recognition of her "signal services". which came under the New Zealand Red Cross.

Wilson destroyed much of her personal correspondence, so details of her later life are few. However, she seemed to have travelled extensively through East Africa based on surviving correspondence with Apsley Cherry-Garrard. She also travelled to an area south of Port Darwin, Australia, that had been previously unvisited by Western women. and is now in the collection of the Scott Polar Research Institute. The wedding was in Hilton, Huntingdonshire, where her father was vicar.

Wilson was widowed by her husband's death on the Terra Nova Expedition in March 1912. As a widow, Wilson's income included £300 annually in a government pension ; £8,500 as a one-time payment from the Mansion House trust ; and a £636 salary from the British Antarctic Expedition .

In published works In 2013, Katherine MacInnes published a book about Wilson entitled Love and Death and Mrs Bill: a play about Oriana, wife of Polar explorer Edward Wilson.

In popular culture Wilson was portrayed by Anne Firth in the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic, and by Sue Robinson in the 1985 television serial The Last Place on Earth.