S. H. (Samuel Henry) Wintle

Born in Hobart Town on 16 September 1830, Samuel Henry Wintle was an Australian scholar, publicist, poet, and amateur geologist. As a child he moved with his family to Sydney, where he is believed to have received much of his scientific education, before returning to Hobart after his father’s death in 1854.

Wintle became known in Tasmania for his public lectures and for writing on geology, fossils, coal, tin, iron, and gold. He was elected to the Royal Society of Tasmania in 1863 and contributed articles to newspapers and journals in Tasmania and other Australian colonies. Alongside his scientific interests, he also wrote poetry and social commentary, earning a reputation as an energetic and sometimes controversial public voice.

Readers today are most likely to meet him through Wayside Sketches in Tasmania (1880), a descriptive travel work that captures the scenery, geology, and character of nineteenth-century Tasmania. He died in East Melbourne on 3 January 1909. No suitable confirmed portrait image was found in the sources reviewed during this search.