I love a good historical-fiction, but have always been squeamish about the kind relating to famous royalty, or JFK for example; it's like I don't want stuff that could be on a test getting warped by popular entertainment. But Tracy Chevalier gets around this by digging up subject matter that most would not be aware of without her having popularized it, and in such an entertaining way, in this case with catastrophically under-represented women in science, genius move!
In the early 1800s, Elizabeth Philpot studied and collected fish fossils, and in the same region (Lyme Regis in England's West Dorcet region) Mary Anning dug up prehistoric oddities that attracted the attention and/or ire of London's Geological Society, eminent French naturalist Georges Cuvier, and the religious community at large - two women, from very different walks of life, who shared an obsession with nature and knowledge. Author Chevalier may have taken artistic liberties with the timeline and the women's relationship, but so artfully and harmlessly.
In the early 1800s, Elizabeth Philpot studied and collected fish fossils, and in the same region (Lyme Regis in England's West Dorcet region) Mary Anning dug up prehistoric oddities that attracted the attention and/or ire of London's Geological Society, eminent French naturalist Georges Cuvier, and the religious community at large - two women, from very different walks of life, who shared an obsession with nature and knowledge. Author Chevalier may have taken artistic liberties with the timeline and the women's relationship, but so artfully and harmlessly.
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