I have to tell you that I was completely charmed by this offering from Shelly Emling. Having been a collector of fossils since early childhood you would think I would have heard of this remarkable woman but until my wife read a fictional account of Mary Anning's life a few years ago, I fear she simply had never appeared on my radar screen...what a pity. Having discussed the fictional work with her, i.e. my wife, I became curious and wanted to know more. The time period covered during Anning's life is of great interest to me...early Victorian England and between that and the fascination with fossils I have, well.....
First of all, this is a very well written work. The reader need to understand that the author is not a scientist, but rather a biographer. Those in search of scientific dissertations need to look elsewhere. No, this is the story of a woman from a different time, a different era but one that had a profound impact as to how we perceive the world around us to this day. Mary Anning was most certainly a woman before her time.
Mary Anning was born in Lyme Regis, England in 1799. Unknown to the world in general, things were about to change. Over a period of around 50to 60 years, science was finally taken from the complete church control, control it had had for years and years. Before this period, geology, biology, anatomy, medicine...and the list goes on, was pretty much dictated by the church and if it was not found in the scriptures, then it was either wrong or did not exists...literally! While Mary was herself an extremely religious and devout woman, her findings helped greatly in paving the way for that remarkable group of European scholars who turned the world around. In many ways Charles Darwin owed this woman a lot...he used many of her findings, incorporating them in his work.
This woman, extremely poor, of a very low social cast (her father was a carpenter), and very little formal education (probably two years of schooling at the most), was at the lead of a wave of new discoveries relating to life on earth over the past several million years. Her fossil finds were absolutely remarkable and her interpretation of the data she exposed was just as remarkable.
The author of course gives an account of Mary Anning's life, but that is only half of the story as to this biography. We are also given a glimpse of England during one of its most trying times...shortly after wars with Napoleon when through horrible taxation laws, the onset of the industrial revolution and an extremely rigid cast system made live absolutely miserable for many people, especially women of a lower social order. Folks, we are given a very nice social history here which is almost as fascinating as the subject herself.
The author, by her own admission, has used quite a lot of speculation in this work, in particular when she records what Mary "might" have been thinking or what her "probable" actions and emotions were in any given situation. At first, I will be honest with you; this was a bit annoying. That is until I thought about it for a while. What the author has done, either consciously or unconsciously, is treated Mary Anning like one of the wonderful fossils she, Anning, discovered herself. When a new fossil is found, there is much to speculate about. The finder has a limited amount of information available (a few bits of fossilized bone in most cases), but through educated "guessing," the scientist can take what is known, such as the era, climate, geographical location, etc. etc. and give a pretty good description of the creature in questions...maybe not 100 percent accurate, but pretty good never the less.
This is just what the author did with Anning. She had limited information but she took it, and through educated guesses; obviously knowing a lot about the early Victorian period and a lot about the women of that time, has given us a pretty good picture of what Mary was like, and indeed, how she thought. I ended up liking this tool and method the author used.
Mary died of breast cancer at a relatively early age in 1887. During her life time , despite being know by and rubbing elbows with some of the greatest scientists in Europe, she was never really given credit for the remarkable contribution she made to science...simply because she was a woman. How sad.
This is a pleasing read, filled with great information and is in fact quite inspirational. I do recommend this one highly.
Don Blankenship
The Ozarks
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