sketcher, was one of the children of Edward Wise, a brewer of Bembridge, Isle of Wight, and Amelia, née Wilson. She married (Sir) William Montagu Manning in Paris on 16 August 1836 and they arrived at Sydney in the City of Edinburgh on 31 August 1837. Her brothers George and (Judge) Edward Wise also migrated to New South Wales.
Emily Manning’s sketchbook (Mitchell Library [ML]) contains forty-seven pencil and watercolour sketches of Europe and New South Wales dating from 1836 to 1839, including St Mark’s Darling Point (1837, w/c), View from Window, Ultimo House (1837, pencil), View from My Window at Trevallyn (1839, pencil and w/c) and Gardener’s Cottage at Trevallyn, Gresford (1839, pencil). Some are initialled, while several relate to her letters (ML) which record visits to friends living at some of the houses she drew. For instance, Emily’s letter to her mother describing her visit to the Blaxland home, Newington, in 1837 not only mentions her own sketching activities but also those of several Blaxland daughters . A larger, more finished watercolour painting of Trevallyn (ML) – formerly Cam-yr-Allyn, the home of Charles Boydell and Phoebe, née Broughton, on the Paterson River near Gresford where the Mannings stayed from January to June 1839 – is undoubtedly her work also, although unsigned. It was obviously developed from a pencil drawing in her sketchbook.
Emily Manning died at Sydney on 16 November 1846, leaving three children. Her daughter, Emily Matilda, became the poet and journalist 'Australie’. Her husband remarried and had a distinguished career in Sydney; he was chancellor of the University of Sydney when women were first admitted to its degrees.
