Congratulations to Anne Coote on the publication of Knowledge for a Nation: Origins of the Royal Society of New South Wales (RSNSW). The book tells the early history of a learned society still active in the intellectual culture of twenty-first century Australia. Hopes and disappointments, conflict and camaraderie, challenges and achievements are all part of this story which highlights the society’s initiatives in the cause of science, its all-male membership, the women who nevertheless contributed, and the society’s glittering conversaziones. The book concludes in 1914, when a visit to Australia by the British Association for the Advancement of Science demonstrated international recognition for the colonial scientific community which the Royal Society had worked so long to help create. Congratulations to Anne and the Royal Society!