Remarkable Creatures (37 page)

Twenty-first-century attitudes towards time and our expectations of story are very different from the shape of Mary Anning’s life. She spent day after day, year after year, doing the same thing on the beach. I have taken the events of her life and condensed them to fit into a narrative that is not stretched beyond the reader’s patience. Hence events, while in order, do not always coincide exactly with actual dates and time spans. Plus, of course, I made up plenty. For instance, while there was gossip about Mary and Buckland and Mary and Birch, there was no proof. That is where only a novelist can step in.

I would like to thank the following: the staff of the libraries at the Geological Society and the Natural History Museum, London; the staff of the Lyme Regis Philpot Museum, the Dorset County Museum and the Dorset History Centre in Dorchester; the Dinosaur Museum, Dorchester, where I first learned of Mary Anning; Philippe Taquet of the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris; Paul Jeffery at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History; Maureen Stollery for her help with Philpot genealogy; Alexandria Lawrence; Jonny Geller; Deborah Schneider; Susan Watt; Carole DeSanti; and Jonathan Drori.

Most of all, I would like to thank three people: Hugh Torrens, who knows more about Mary Anning than anyone and has been very cordial to me. Jo Draper, who is a saint, opening up the files at the Philpot Museum and sending me bits and pieces of information about everything, and who wears her erudition lightly and with great humor. Finally, Paddy Howe, fossil hunter ex traordinaire, who gave me many fossils and took me upon beach between Lyme and Charmouth to find more, teaching me with patience, intelligence, and grace.

Further Reading

 

 

 

 

Cadbury, Deborah,
The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World,
2000 (UK); as
Terrible Lizard: The First Dinosaur Hunters and the Birth of a New Science,
2001 (US)

 

Conybeare, William, and Henry De La Beche, papers on the ich thyosaur and plesiosaur for the Geological Society, 1821, 1822, 1824, reprinted in
The Dinosaur Papers, 1676-1906,
edited by David B. Weishampel and Nadine M. White, 2004

 

Draper, Jo,
Mary Anning’s Town: Lyme Regis,
2004

 

Fowles, John,
A Short History of Lyme Regis,
1991

 

Gillispie, Charles C.,
Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850,
1951

 

Howe, S. R., T. Sharpe, and H. S. Torrens,
Ichthyosaurs: A History of Fossil “Sea-Dragons,”
1981

 

Lang, W. D., various papers on Mary Anning in the
Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society,
1936-1963

 

McGowan, Christopher,
The Dragon Seekers: The Discovery of Dinosaurs During the Prelude to Darwin,
2001

 

Pascoe, Judith, chapter on Mary Anning in
The Hummingbird Cabinet: A Rare and Curious History of Romantic Collectors,
2005

 

Pierce, Patricia,
Jurassic Mary: Mary Anning and the Primeval Monsters,
2006

 

Roberts, George,
Roberts’ History of Lyme Regis and Charmouth,
1834

 

Rudwick, Martin J. S.,
Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution,
2005; and
Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform,
2008

 

Taquet, Philippe, “Quand les Reptiles marins anglais traversaient la Manche: Mary Anning et Georges Cuvier, deux acteurs de la découverte et de l’étude des Ichthyosaures et des Plésio saures,” in
Annales de Paléontologie
89 (2003): 37-64

 

Tickell, Crispin,
Mary Anning of Lyme Regis,
1996

 

Torrens, Hugh, “Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme; ‘the greatest fossilist the world ever knew,’ ” in
British Journal for the History of Science
28 (1995): 257-84