Oriana Wilson (nee Souper) was the eldest child of the Reverend F.A. Souper. She met Edward Adrian Wilson in 1897 and married him on 16 July 1901, less than a month before his departure to the Antarctic on the British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901-1904 (leader Robert Falcon Scott). She travelled to New Zealand with her husband after he was selected for the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-1913 (again led by Scott). Returning again to New Zealand in 1912 to greet the polar party, she received the news of her husband's death. (He died with Scott and Henry Robinson Bowers on the return journey from the South Pole in late March 1912).
During the First World War, she worked for the New Zealand Red Cross and was awarded a CBE for her services. She died on 25 April 1945, bequeathing her husband's watercolours and sketchbooks of Antarctic landscapes to the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge.
From the guide to the Oriana Wilson collection, 1901-1929, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)
