Background
Born Elizabeth Olive Wood near Nuku"alofa, Tonga, she was often known as Bess or Pesi Wood. She was a daughter of Reverend Doctor A. Harold Wood Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (1896–1989), a renowned Methodist then Uniting Church minister and educator, and medical Doctor Olive K. Wood (née O"Reilly), who were Australian missionaries in Tonga 1924-1937. She had five brothers and sisters, including Janet Secomb, herself a missionary to Tonga, actor Monica Maughan and Uniting Church minister and hymnologist Review
Doctor H. D."Arcy Wood.
Education
Moving to Australia in 1937, Elizabeth was educated Methodist Ladies" College in Melbourne where, in her final year, she topped the state in Greek and Roman History.
At Melbourne University, she majored in English and History, gaining a Bachelor in 1953, and would later undertake her Doctor of Philosophy there.
Career
Wood-Ellem earned her living as a book editor and indexer, initially at Angus & Robertson in Sydney, then London (1960-1972) with Macmillan and Paul Hamlyn, and later worked freelance. She was also appointed an archivist at King"s College, Cambridge University, to sort and catalogue the papers of British novelist East. M. Forster after his death in 1970. Churchill College, Cambridge, then engaged her as Assistant Librarian for Archives to catalogue Sir James Grigg"s papers and Authorised Version Alexander"s correspondence.
She completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Tongan history in 1982 at the University of Melbourne and remained a Senior Fellow there at the time of her death.
She published her biography of Queen Sālote of Tonga in 1999. Fairfax’s Pacific correspondent Mike Field has said of it: ‘If I were nominate a single, superb book on the Pacific, Queen Sālote of Tonga: The Story of an Era 1900-1965 is one of the finest pieces of historical research and insight, anthropology and understanding of Tonga that you’ll ever find.
You don’t even have to be vaguely interested in Queen Sālote, but in how Tonga works.’ Notable books she edited include and
