Fish with a Different Angle: The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain by Mrs Sarah Bowdich (1791–1856)
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 71; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00033790.2013.840927
ISSN1464-505X
Autores Tópico(s)Fish Ecology and Management Studies
ResumoSummarySince first appearance, reviews and accounts of The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain (1828–1838) have been surprisingly few. All agree that this rare work is remarkable for its illustrations. Its importance as a whole in the history of ichthyology, however, is largely unknown, or ignored. This article therefore constitutes the first study of the textual and contextual significance of The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain. By examining in chronological order where, and by whom, the work was first reviewed and referenced until the 1860s, the extraordinary contributions that its author, Sarah Bowdich, made to ichthyology at the forefront of the field in the late 1820s can better be appreciated. Indeed, this multiple evidence demonstrates Sarah Bowdich's merits as an ichthyologist of the first order, and as the first woman ichthyologist. But establishing the significance of The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain for the history of ichthyology then raises a further question. Why has it and its author been so ignored or forgotten? By returning for answers to the fields of ichthyology already considered, the article proposes that Sarah Bowdich's different angles on fish offer lines of investigation that are still important for the field today. AcknowledgementsThe research for this article was supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (RF/1/RFG/2010/0435) for the project ‘A Remarkable Woman in Science: Sarah Bowdich (Lee) 1791-1856.’ A Distinguished Academic Visitorship at Queens' College Cambridge in Michaelmas Term 2010 enabled research at Cambridge University Library. Especial thanks go to staff in its Rare Books department for their interest and facilitation of my study of The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain and other rare British ichthyology books.Notes1 Rich Landers, ‘WSU nets $.8 million classic angling book collection’ (4 September 2011), http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/sep/04/wsu-nets-18-million-classic-angling-book/ [last consulted 13 July 2012]; Darin Watkins, ‘Largest rare book collection donated to WSU’ (30 August 2011), http://wsutoday.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&Publichttp://wsutoday.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=27266&TypeID=1 [last consulted 13 July 2012].2 David Elliston Allen, Books and Naturalists (London: HarperCollins, 2010) 9–10, 465 for the appendix reference. Allen's phrasing draws upon information on the Fresh-Water Fishes given in Donald deB. Beaver's ‘Writing Natural History for Survival, 1820–1856: the Case of Sarah Bowdich, later Sarah Lee’, Archives of Natural History (1999), 26.1, 19–31. This is the most authoritative biographical account to date of Sarah's life and struggle for economic and scientific recognition, and seminal review of her works.3 Ann B. Shteir, ‘Women and the Natural World: Expanding Horizons at Home’, in Intrepid Women: Victorian Artists Travel, edited by Jordana Pomeroy (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2005), 67–76 (71). Included is ‘Figure 5.2’, ‘The Carp’, a black and white reproduction from the original source. This draws on the earlier work of Barbara T. Gates, Kindred Nature:Victorian and Edwardian Women Embrace the Living World (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1998), 77–79 (including a reproduction of ‘The Perch’ in ‘Figure 15’). Gates does not clarify her reason for choosing the Perch. Tracking previous critical work in the history of science on Sarah Bowdich in reverse chronology here is a deliberate strategy to map who read whom. This point will have crucial relevance in section four.4 Gates, Kindred Nature, 78–79. The knotty issue of how to name a woman in science such as Sarah Bowdich, who published under her first husband's name as ‘Mrs T. Edward Bowdich’, and also that of her second, as ‘Mrs R. Lee’, complicates further the same issue raised by Patricia Fara in Scientists Anonymous: Great Stories of Women in Science (Cambridge: Wizard Books, 2005), using the example of Dorothy Hodgkin: ‘The only name that is truly hers is Dorothy. However male scientists are referred to by their surnames. […] So I believe that to call her Dorothy would be patronising and would reinforce the idea that women scientists somehow do a different sort of science from men’ (5). Fara's solution is to call the woman by the surname that she used. In the remainder of this article I use ‘Sarah’, to emphasise the important continuities in her scientific work, whether as Bowdich or Lee, and to distinguish from scientific convention by surname only, because this renders women invisible. In so doing, I am neither patronising her, nor questioning her science as different from men's. The opposite is the case since the work of men of the same family may also be misrepresented. The Forsters, father and son, in the history of ichthyology are a pertinent example.5 Huon Mallalieu, ‘The Compleat Ichthyologist,’ Country Life (26 Feb. 2004), 78. The one-page article in four columns includes two colour reprints not hitherto published: ‘A Flounder from The Freshwater [sic] Fishes of Great Britain, 1828’ (bottom left of column 2) and ‘A Pope from The Freshwater [sic] Fishes of Great Britain, 1828’ (top of columns 3–4). ‘The Rud or Finscale’ was available for view on the website of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia prior to its management by Drexel University at the (now defunct) link: http://www.ansp.org/museum/digital_collections/fish/bowdich.php [last accessed 21 May 2010].6 Donald deB. Beaver, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16310 [last accessed 11 April 2013]. Mallalieu's reference to Humboldt comes from Beaver's earlier version of the DNB entry, and he provides no bibliography to support his statement that Mrs Bowdich was ‘revered among academic natural historians and antiquarian booksellers’.7 The work of Shteir and Gates (Footnotenote 3) is part of the important recuperation of women ‘scientists’ by women (and feminist) historians of science in the last three decades. For an overview, see Muriel Lederman and Ingrid Bartsch, eds, The Gender and Science Reader (London: Routledge, 2001). Review essays, surveys and biographical dictionaries were essential launch points, however. See for example Londa Schiebinger, ‘The History and Philosophy of Women in Science’, Signs,12:2 (Winter, 1987), 305–32; Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, Women in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century: A Biographical Dictionary with Annotated Bibliography (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988); Ludmilla Jordanova, ‘Gender and the Historiography of Science’, British Journal of the History of Science, 26 (1993), 469–83; Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, ‘Women in the History of Science: An Ambiguous Place’, Osiris, 10 (1995), 39–58 and Ruth Watts, Women in Science: A Social and Cultural History (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2007). For studies considering the roles and place of women in nineteenth-century science endeavour, see Prina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram, Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science 1789–1979 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989); Mary R. S. Creese and Thomas M. Creese, ‘British Women who Contributed to Research in the Geological Sciences in the Nineteenth Century’, Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 117 (2006), 53–83; Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, ‘In from the Periphery: American Women in Science, 1830–1880’, Signs, 4:1 (Autumn, 1978), 81–96. The Anglophone critical-theoretical focus of these excellent studies is one of the dimensions this article brings into question.8 The Magazine of Natural History 1 (1829), by J. C. Loudon (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1829), 53–54. Loudon's Preface (iii–iv) outlines its remits and sections. Although it represents ‘Miscellaneous Intelligence and Collectianea’ it has clear sections: ‘1. A more general diffusion of knowledge of Animals, Vegetables, and Minerals […] 2. A record of discoveries in these branches of knowledge; and of the actual state and progress of the taste for Natural History, in different parts of the British Empire, and throughout the world. 3. A summary of the progress of discovery in natural science in the past year.’ (iii). Loudon concludes: ‘We date this Preface from the city of Naturalists, and the best sources of information on all that relates to Natural History.’(iv). To underscore this point, the first number contains two articles outlining different elements of ‘The Cuverian, or Natural, System of Zoology’ by ‘B’ (97–106; 309–19). It also contains two articles written by ‘Mrs. Bowdich’: ‘Anecdotes of a Tamed Panther’ (108–112) in the ‘Zoology’ section, and under ‘Botany’ (with illustrations) ‘On the Natural Order of Plants, Dicotyleòdneae, Anonàceae’ (438–41). Mrs Bowdich is one of three women to contribute to the first issue, ‘Mrs Harvey’ and the Botanist Miss Kent being the other two.9 The header stands out from the norm used for reviews about works by men. See for example that for ‘Sowerby, George Brettingham, F.L.S. Collector of objects of Natural History, and general Agent and Salesman in articles of this description, residing at No. 156. Regent Street, London: The Genera of recent and fossil Shells, for the use of Students in Conchology and Geology. With original Plates, drawn and engraved by J. D. C. Sowerby, F. L. S. London. In 8vo Numbers, monthly. 45. plain; 6s. highly finished in colours.’ (Magazine, I, 56).10 Sarah Bowdich, The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain (London: Ackermann, 1828), iii–iv (p. iii). Further quotations will take the form FWFGB followed by page number, or by the number assigned to the fish in question since the main text is un-paginated.11 FWFGB, iv. In quoting this passage Gates (Footnotenote 3), 78 claims that as ‘[a]n early Victorian gentlewoman, Lee felt it was unseemly to catch her own specimens,’ whereas the contexts make clear that angling (by either sex) is not the book's subject. William Barker Daniel's Rural Sports (1801) and Supplement to Rural Sports (1813) contain anecdotes and poems on angling, together with extensive information on this pursuit and on angling literature; the third volume of Thomas Pennant's four-volume British Zoology (1776) deals with Fish, and not only of Britain (all in the one ‘Class IV’), with references to classic sources for their descriptions.12 Sir Humphrey Davy was an avid and knowledgeable fresh-water angler as well as being an eminent chemist. He is the last-named of the seven subscribers to the FWFGB with peerages. His Salmonia: or Days of Fly Fishing in a Series of Conversations. With Some Account of the Genus Salmo (London: John Murray, 1828) appeared the same year as the first number of FWFGB. His title by contrast reflects the work's main interests, for anglers. Davy's preface (p. viii) similarly makes reference to Cuvier's much anticipated ‘new work on fishes.’13 The issue of female authorship and authority, and women's masks for it through use of (self)-deprecation,understatement and pseudonyms is a very familiar one in literary-cultural studies of the period (and on both sides of the Channel). See for example Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and Jane Austen (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984) and Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir and Penny Warburton, eds., Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700-1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Sarah Bowdich's minimising of her ‘little preface’ by writing ‘a few words’ to the ends of ensuring readers are in no doubt of her ‘accuracy’ are exactly such ploys.14 Despite offering one of the most exhaustive classifications of the involvements of British women in ‘geological sciences’, including ‘Lee, Sarah Wallis Bowdich’, Creese and Creese, (Footnotenote 7), 58–62 do not include ‘ichthyology’ among their sub-fields. Much more than botany, serious study of ichthyology was heavily reliant on specialist knowledge, and training in museum collections, closed to women in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The vogue for representing fisher-women in New England in the 1840s is a fascinating topic, but lies outside this article. See Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, ‘The Romance of Fisherwomen in Antebellum New England’, American Studies 39:1 (Spring 1998), 5–30.15 See Abir-Am and Outram (Footnotenote 7), a rightly authoritative study with regard to the spaces women in science could occupy in the period alongside scientific brothers, fathers or spouses. For further examination of ‘creative couples’ in science see Helena M. Pycior, Nancy G. Slack, and Prina G. Abir-Am, eds. Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996).16 FWFGB, iii. Strikingly the reviewer's gloss glosses over Sarah's text, again to highlight only the illustrations: ‘The regular series of the families has been intentionally interrupted in the illustrations, for the sake of variety in each number; those least interesting to the eye being mingled with their more beautiful companions.’ Magazine (Footnotenote 9), 53, emphasis added.17 FWFGB, iii.18 The linguistic/cultural range (apart from knowledge of Latin) of Sarah Bowdich's specialist acknowledgements and attributions for each Fish is a major achievement, the number of sources averaging 8. Almost more significant are the Fish which are unknown to European expert commentators, including Cuvier. A clear example is FWFGB No. 39 ‘Graining’ to which discussion below will return:‘Ordo II – Malacopterygii. AbdominalesFamilia I – Cyprinoides – Genus I CyprinusSpecies Leuciscus LancastriensisGraining – Shaw’.19 FWFGB, Number 2 The Carp (first of the two-page entry).20 For a study and definitions of ekphrasis, see for example Peter Wagner, Icons, Texts, Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality (Berlin & New York: W. de Gruyter, 1996).21 For images of Auzoux's models see http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/whipple/explore/models/drauzouxsmodels [last accessed 14 August 2012]. For the important history and life-likeness of anatomical models, particularly in the early nineteenth century see Regis Olry, ‘Wax, Wooden, Ivory, Cardboard, Bronze, Fabric, Plaster, Rubber and Plastic Anatomical Models: Praiseworthy Precursors of Plastinated Specimens,’ Journal of International Society of Plastination 15:1 (2000), 30–35, and Antonio G. Valdecasas, Ana M. Correas, Carmen R. Guerrero and Jesús Juez, ‘Understanding Complex Systems: Lessons from Auzoux's and von Hagens's Anatomical Models,’ Journal of Bioscience, 34 (2009), 835–43. The further ‘impossibility’ of connecting Sarah's work with the new anatomical models created by Louis Auzoux in Paris, will be clarified below.22 Francis Willughby, De Historia piscium, vol. IV (1648); John Ray, Synopsis Methodica Avium et Piscium (1713); Edward Donovan, The Natural History of British Fishes.[…], 5 vols. (London: Printed for the Author and for F. & C. Rivington, 1802–1808). For Pennant see Footnotenote 10. Their continental Renaissance equivalents were Pierre Belon's De Aquatilibus (1553, over 100 species of Mediterranean fish with woodcuts); Guillaume Rondelet's De Piscibus marinis (1554, with woodcuts), Hippolito Salviani's Aquatilium animalium historia (1557, with copper engravings). The fish manuscripts of Peter Artedi (1705–35) became the property of Linnaeus. Marcus Eliezer Bloch's Allgemeine Naturgeschichte der Fische (1782–1797) was revised by Schneider and translated into French; Bernard Germain de Lacépède's five-volume Histoire naturelle des poissons 1798–1803) is the direct predecessor of Georges Cuvier's ‘great work’ with Valenciennes.23 See Donald deB. Beaver's entry in the DNB (Footnotenote 6) which claims that ‘To support themselves the Bowdichs published several English translations of French texts between 1820 and 1822.’ In several cases these were not ‘translations’, but the Bowdichs’ dissemination of the latest French natural science, with additional information of their own. Sarah's many accompanying illustrations visibly lack her later expertise in FWFGB.24 See Neil Chambers, ed., The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765–1820. Volume 6. The Late Period, 1800-1820 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009). Biot's very warm and persuasive letter to Banks, dated ‘1819’ (no. 2165, 327–8 with English translation, 329), refers to Bowdich being in Europe. Later correspondence from Banks to Sir Charles Blagden on 6 Sept. 1819 (letter 2189) and 11 Oct. 1819 (letter 2194) reveals why Banks has still not responded to Biot having consulted ‘literary friends.’ They ‘expressed doubts of Mr Bowditch's [sic] capacity which I conclude he heard of, for he wrote me a letter not penned in the best Temper assuring me that he must be capable of conducting Pendulum Experiments.’ Bowdich's ‘Temper’ is not the only reason: Banks is also supporting a different surveyor, Captain Kater.25 For a comprehensive history of the Jardin des Plantes in this period see Claude Blanckaert, Claudine Cohen, Pietro Corsi and Jean-Louis Fischer eds., Le Muséum au Premier Siècle de son Histoire (Paris: Éditions du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 1997).26 For the scientific import of Napoleon's Expédition d’Égypte, see Robert Solé, Les Savants de Bonaparte(Paris: Seuil, 1998), and Yves Laissus, L’Égypte, une Aventure Savante (Paris: Fayard, 1998).27 Dr G.-L. Duvernoy, Sophie Duvaucel d'après des Correspondances inédites (Montbéliard: Société Anonyme d'Imprimerie Montbéliardaise. Extrait des Mémoires de la Société d’Émulation, 1939), 6. The letter in question is translated in Mary Orr, ‘Keeping it in the Family: the Extraordinary Case of Cuvier's Daughters,’ in Cynthia V. Burek and Bettie Higgs eds., The Role of Women in the History of Geology, Special Publications 281 (London: Geological Society of London, 2007), 277–86 (283). For the extensive work of ‘catch-up’ by British science in the 1820s, see Adrian Desmond, ‘The Making of Institutional Zoology in London, 1822–1836: Part 1’, History of Science 23:2 (June 1985), 153–85 and ‘The Making of Institutional Zoology in London, 1822–1836: Part 2’, History of Science, 23:3 (September 1985), 223–50.28 The legal and educational blocks on (French) women's engagements in natural science in first half of the nineteenth century therefore explain why, for French historians of science, (French) women cannot exist in such fields. See Jean-Pierre Poirier, Histoire des Femmes de Science en France: du Moyen Age à la Révolution (Paris: Pygmalion Gérard Watelet, 2002), and Eric Sartori, Histoire des Femmes Scientifiques de l'Antiquité au XXe siècle: les Filles d'Hypatie (Paris: Plon, 2006).29 The biography was published under Sarah's second married name, Mrs. R. Lee, Memoirs of Baron Cuvier (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman, 1833); and Mistress Lee, Mémoires du Baron Georges Cuvier. trans. Théodore Lacordaire (Paris: H. Fournier, 1833). An American version also appeared simultaneously, published in New York by J. & J. Harper. In her widely acknowledged study, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), Dorinda Outram references, and draws frequently on, Lee's Memoirs. It is only from private correspondence (held at the Bibliothèque Centrale, MNHN, Paris) that we know that Sarah was actively solicited by both Sophie Duvaucel and Dr G.-L. Duvernoy to write this book and publish it in France. See Sarah's replies to Dr G.-L. Duvernoy, 18 February 1833 (no. 1708), and 27 August 1833 (no. 1709), in Dr G.-L. Duvernoy Correspondance, vol. 7 (Ms 2749). Here Sarah also mentions her scientific observations in the Galleries of the Jardin des Plantes, and of living animals in its Menagerie.30 Sarah Bowdich, Taxidermy: on the Art of Collecting, Preparing and Mounting Objects of Natural History. For the Use of Museums and Travellers, 6th Edition (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1843), iii–iv. The first edition by the same title was published in 1820 by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. Taxidermy required expert knowledge of physiology and of preservation techniques, particularly applications for very soft and readily bruisable skins and tissue, for example in fish. The importance of women taxidermists in Britain and its colonies in the nineteenth century is a fascinating aside that lies outside this study. See Christopher Frost, Victorian Taxidermy: its History and finest Exponents (Frost: 1981).31 Bowdich, Taxidermy, 6th Edition, 111–12.32 FWFGB, number 39. In the text Sarah reports that her ‘health’ prevents her visit to Lancashire, and that a first attempt by a Dr Kendrick with the bladder method failed because the fish were kept in it too long. The second attempt succeeded, and Sarah reports ‘the pleasure of seeing my fish leaping alive. It remained in this condition for several hours, and, would probably not then have died, had I not pinched it just below the gills, to make it lie still while I was taking its dimensions.’33 Published under the name T. E. Bowdich (London: George B. Whittaker, 1825), pages 199 and 266 respectively.34 See Mary Orr, ‘Pursuing Proper Protocol: Sarah Bowdich's Purview of the Sciences of Exploration,’ Victorian Studies (2007), 277–85 (282–4).35 In the Dr G.-L. Duvernoy Correspondance Vol. 2 (Footnotenote 22), is a letter from Clémentine Cuvier (Cuvier's daughter) of 11 May 1826 (Ms 2744), sent from the Jardin des Plantes: ‘[…] nous avions beaucoup de monde. […] notre amie, Mme Bowdich, arrivée ce matin, et qui vient passer un mois avec nous.’ (we entertained many people […] our friend, Mrs Bowdich, who arrived this morning has come to spend a month with us.)36 Excursions dans les Isles de Madère et de Porto Santo (Paris: chez F. G. Levrault, 1826). A further indication of the scientific merits of this work is that Levrault published all key works produced at the Jardin des Plantes, including the Histoire naturelle des poissons by Cuvier and Valenciennes. Moreover as Perpetual Secretary, Cuvier ensured that all new scientific advances and publications were reported and reviewed in the Muséum's Bulletin des sciences naturelles et de géologie. It carried three reviews of the Excursions: by G…N [M. Guillemin], [the English version] 5 (1824), 347–50; by Dem. st [M. Desmarest], ‘Excursions in Madeira and Porto Santo…’ 6 (1825), 396–8, and F. [de Férussac], ‘Excursions…’ [the French version] 8 (1826), 281–3. All three reviewers draw attention to the new fish.37 Information in the ‘Lot Description’ on Christies’ website about one recently sold copy of The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain states that ‘Mrs Bowdich's Fresh-Water Fishes was instigated in the early 1820s by Lord de Tabey and the publisher William Pickering who planned a volume on British Ichthylogy to be edited by Jerdan. A prospectus was issued. The project floundered when Lord Tabey became ill, and the project was handed over to Sarah Bowdich.’ http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?entry=fresh-water+fishes+of+Great+Britain&action=search&searchtype=u&searchFrom=header [last consulted 12 April 2013].38 M. le Baron Cuvier et M. Valenciennes, Histoire naturelle des poissons, 27 vols. inc. 5 with coloured plates (Paris: F. G. Levrault, 1828–49), henceforth HP.39 HP, I, 1–2, my translation. This volume has only recently been translated into English as the Historical Portrait of the Progress of Ichthyology: from its origins to our own time by Georges Cuvier, ed. Theodore W. Pietsch. Trans. Abby J. Simpson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). Remaining volumes of HP are un-translated. The reasons for quoting from the original French will become apparent below.40 Cuvier spent the Revolution in Normandy, and several months in Marseille in 1803, studying and drawing marine fish and molluscs. This formative part of his career was the only period of fieldwork he undertook alone. He declined the invitation to join Napoleon's Egyptian Expedition to take up the Chair of Comparative Anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes. See HP, 1, 251.41 Using local fishermen is not as much of a gender issue as Gates (Footnotenote 11) purports. For example, William Thompson, the expert on Irish Fish (including the Pollan) also studied specimens caught by local anglers as reported in his (posthumous) The Natural History of Ireland 4 Vols. Vol. IV Mammalia, Reptiles, and Fishes, also Invertebrata (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1856).42 HP, I, vi–vii. This ‘Avertissement’ is omitted from Pietch's English edition (Footnotenote 34).43 HP, I, vii.44 Ms 1963, ‘Legs Cuvier à M. Valenciennes,’ on page 6 under ‘poissons de Divers pays.'Also listed (on the final page), under the rubric ‘(Voyages)’, is ‘Bowdich.—à Madère. 1 vol in 4o (en anglais).’45 My translation. The original Prospectus was not available at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The reference is from its re-edition: Histoire naturelle des poissons par M. Le Baron Cuvier et M. Valenciennes. Prospectus rédigé par M. le Baron Cuvier (Paris: Imprimerie de Mallet-Bachelier, 1862), 14. Cuvier largely lifted the material for the Prospectus from HP, I, 27-8, See Pietsch (Footnotenote 34), 122.46 My translation. HP, I, 127–8, including the footnote. Abby Simpson unfortunately translates ‘aimable’ as ‘aimiable.’ Physically the English edition also further separates Cuvier's text from its note (Pietsch, Footnotenote 34, 122, and 130 respectively), but this enables Pietsch to supplement Cuvier's note with his own, a short biographical notice on ‘Sarah Bowdich, née Wallis.’ Anglophone specialists have again failed to pick up the importance of this supplementary information not in Cuvier's original.47 See Peter J. P. Whitehead, Forty Drawings of Fishes made by the Artists who accompanied Captain James Cook on his Three Voyages to the Pacific, 1768–71, 1772–75, 1776–80. Some being used by Authors in the Description of New Species (London: Trustees of the British Museum (Natural History) London, 1966). In the introduction (ix–xxiii) Whitehead states that ‘Few of the Cook fishes have ever been described beyond Solander's MS notes, and the drawings alone were not used as the sole basis for descriptions until 1826. Brussonet (in 1782–1786) and Shaw (in 1792) appear to be the only early authors to have described new fishes on Cook material. […] But [in 1826–1846] the drawings […] were used by leading ichthyologists of the period, including Cuvier, Valenciennes, Lay and Bennett, Müller and Henle, Richardson, Swainson and Gray. The Forster drawings were copied for Cuvier at this time by Sarah Lee, formerly Mrs T. E. Bowdich’ (xviii). See also Marie-Louise Bauchot, Jean Daget et Roland Bauchot, L'Ichtyologie en France au début du XIXesiècle: l'Histoire naturelle des Poissons de Cuvier et Valenciennes, 4e série, 12 (Paris: Bulletin du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, 1990). Apart from an erroneous biography for Sarah Bowdich in an appendix, Marie-Louise Bauchot confines Sarah's roles in Cuvier's project: ‘Elle copia pour Cuvier de nombreux dessins de son mari, ainsi que de Forster et de Parkinson, et envoya à Paris des poissons de Grande-Bretagne et d’Écosse.’ (6) [She copied many drawings by her husband for Cuvier as well as those by Forster and Parkinson, and sent British and Scottish fish to Paris, my translation and emphasis].48 See http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/eigenmann.html [last accessed 14 August 2012].49 For representative expert modern studies that omit Sarah, see Alwyne Wheeler, The Fishes of the British Isles and North-West Europe. Illustrated by Valerie Du Heaume (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1969) and Cynthia E. Davies, Jonathan Shelley, Paul T. Harding, Ian F. G. McLean, Ross Gardner and Graeme Pierson, editors, Freshwater Fishes in Britain: The Species and their Distribution (Colchester: Harley Books, 2004).50 Patricia Stocking Brown, ‘Early Women Ichthyologists,’ Environmental Biology of Fishes, 41: 1 (1994), 41: 1–4, 9–32. Significantly, Eigenmann is classified as the first woman in ichthyology in a special issue that examines those who worked (and published) in Anglophone contexts.51 Donovan, Footnotenote 18. Vol. 1 was published in 1802; Vol. II in 1803; Vol. III in 1804; Vol. IV in 1806 and Vol. V in 1808. There was no list of subscribers. The inventory of Cuvier's library records all five volumes (see Footnotenote 38), so Sarah could readily have consulted his copy.52 Donovan, V. The Carp is Plate number CX (there is no pagination), but the quotation is on the second of a three-page entry.53 See W. L. Braekman, The Treatise on Angling in ‘The Boke of St. Albans’ (1496). Background, Context and Text of ‘The treatyse of fysshynge wyth an Angle’ (Brussels: Scripta, 1980).54 The ‘Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle’ attributed to Dame Juliana Berners. Reprinted from The Book of St. Albans (London: William Pickering, 1827). Zboray and Zboray (Footnotenote 12, Footnote7), register the impacts of reprints of the Treatyse in spearheading the vogue they describe. For the wide-reaching importance of popularisation of science in the nineteenth century, and its many modes, see Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).55 In literary history the same processes have been termed ‘the anxiety of influence’ and ‘map of misreading.’ See Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence: a Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), and A Map of Misreading (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). For feminists, the issue for women writers is not having influenced, that is the ‘anxiety of authorship’ (which describes Sarah's case). See Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press
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