Sarah Bowdich Lee (1791-1856) and Pioneering Perspectives on Natural History
History from below uncovers overlooked protagonists contributing to (inter)national endeavour often against considerable odds. Mrs T. Edward Bowdich then Mrs R. Lee (1791–1856) is indicative.
When women allegedly cannot participate in early nineteenth-century scientific exploration, discovery and publication, Sarah’s multiple specialist contributions to French and British natural history, and to their dissemination, have surprisingly attracted no book-length study. This first appraisal of Sarah’s unbroken production of discipline-changing scientific work over three decades – in ichthyology, in historical geography, in the public dissemination of scientific knowledge – does more than fill this gap. It also pivotally investigates the intercultural and multi-genre dynamics of Sarah’s pioneering perspectives and contributions achieved often at great personal cost. Sarah’s larger significance is then to challenge ‘secondary’ or ‘leaky-pipeline’ models for women’s pioneering work in nineteenth-century natural history as a case study in the distinction of pertinence to women in STEM(M) today.
Mary Orr is the Buchanan Chair of French at the University of St Andrews. Her specialist research in nineteenth-century French studies connects its literature, histories and cultures including the natural and earth sciences.
