THE ESSEX SERPENT (SARAH PERRY) AND THE PALEONTOLOGIST MARY ANNING

What’s more, he blamed himself for Cora’s adoration for the geologist Mary Anning: she’d never shown the least interest in grubbing about among rocks and mud until finding herself at an Ambrose dinner party seated beside an elderly man who’d spoken with Anning once and been in love with her memory ever since. By the time Cora had heard his tales of the carpenter’s daughter who grew strong after a lightning strike, and of her first fossil find at twelve, and her poverty, and her martyrdom to cancer, she too was in love and for months afterwards talked of nothing but blue lias and bezoar stones.

This blog wants to join the trend of recognizing female scientists. We want to add the paleontologist Mary Anning (although the text calls her a geologist) to the list headed by Marie Curie.

Paleontology and Geology don’t have a good reputation among scientists. So, the unfortunate Mary Anning suffered a double discrimination: one related to her gender at the time, and the other by ‘authentic,’ hard scientists.

I have a soft spot for the clever English women of the nineteenth century, how they had to deal with overbearing men, boring clergymen...
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-essex-serpent/sarah-perry/9781781255452