Sarah Eglonton Bowdich Lee (née Wallis; 10 September 1791 – 22 September 1856) was an English author, illustrator, traveller, zoologist, botanist, and pteridologist.

Biography

Sarah Eglonton Wallis was born on 10 September 1791,[1] the only daughter of John Eglinton Wallis of Colchester.

In 1813, she married the naturalist Thomas Edward Bowdich,[2] whose interests in nature, travel, and adventure she shared.

In 1819, they went to Paris to visit Baron Cuvier; Thomas had previously visited him in 1818 with a letter of introduction obtained from Dr. William Elford Leach of the British Museum. They spent most of the next four years in Paris studying his collections.

In 1823, on their final trip to Africa, they visited Madeira on their way, but her husband died on the Gambia River on 10 January 1824.[2]

Left with three children, she struggled to support her family as an author.[3] Early in her widowhood, Mrs Bowdich often visited Baron Cuvier in Paris, where he treated her almost like a daughter; upon his death in 1832, she wrote a memoir of his life.[citation needed]

In 1826, she married Robert Lee and in subsequent years published under the name Mrs. Robert Lee.

In 1854, she was granted a civil list pension of £50 per year. In 1856, she died at Erith while visiting her daughter Eugenia.[4][5]

Of her numerous works, perhaps the four most important are Taxidermy (1820) an exhaustive treatment which came to a sixth edition in 1843; Excursions in Madeira and Porto Santo (1825), a work of natural history; The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain (1825), illustrated by the author;[6] and Memoirs of Baron Cuvier (1833).

Selected publications

The standard author abbreviation Bowdich is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[7]

Taxon described by her

References

  1. ^ "Lee, Sarah Eglonton Wallis Bowdich". Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Encyclopedia.com. 18 September 2023. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  2. ^ a b Watkins 1892.
  3. ^ Beaver DB (1999). "Writing natural history for survival - 1820-1856: the case of Sarah Bowdich, later Sarah Lee". Archives of Natural History. 26 (1): 19–31. doi:10.3366/anh.1999.26.1.19. ISSN 0260-9541. PMID 19350744.
  4. ^ Creese, Mary R. S. (2004), Ladies in the Laboratory II: Western European Women in Science, 1800-1900, Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, pp. 225–227
  5. ^ deB. Beaver, Donald (24 May 2007). "Lee [née Wallis; other married name Bowdich], Sarah (1791–1856), naturalist and author". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16310. Retrieved 31 July 2019. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. ^ Gates, Barbara T. (1998). Kindred nature: Victorian and Edwardian women embrace the living world. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-28443-3. (pbk). (cloth).
  7. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Bowdich.
Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Watkins, Morgan George (1892). "Lee, Sarah". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 32. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 379.

External Sources

Wikispecies has information related to Sarah Bowdich.
Wikisource has the text of an 1879 American Cyclopædia article about Sarah Bowdich Lee.
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