MARY ANNING JUNIOR (1799-1847): AN EXTRAORDINARY ENGLISH GEOLOGICAL PIONEER (Invited Presentation)

Anning’s life has been over romanticised as hardly befits the provincial, working-class, female who, working alone, could accurately and correctly inform the King of Saxony in 1844 that “she was well known throughout Europe". Her achievement viewed instead from America is that "she was the greatest fossilist the world ever knew". She has the distinction of being one of the most biographized figures within geology, and she is now regarded as one of the most influential British women in the history of science.

Such suggests she must have been well served by history, in view of the new, and welcome, interest in women's history. The truth is otherwise. She is instead the subject of many 'illustrated books for children' (one now in Japanese), which ignore her work as an adult. Other writers have employed mere journalism, or even fiction, since "there are so few known facts about Mary Anning". This illustrated contribution will outline the history of the Mary Annings and attempt to separate romance from reality. Mary Anning first emerges as having been two women. Her mother, also Mary, having been completely subsumed by her daughter. Any proper historian of the Mary Annings does face real problems, since neither published, instead they both made a series of major paleontological discoveries, of both invertebrate and vertebrate fossils, on which other, always male, scientists then built their reputations.

But it has proved possible, from a wide range of sources, to shed proper light on the origins, achievements, and hopes and aspirations of both Annings. Mary junior proves to be the perfect focus to urge the importance of the now World Heritage-designated Jurassic Coast, in Dorset, England. Plans are here afoot for a new Anning wing at the Lyme Regis Museum, which was unknowingly built on her birthplace. This should ensure she will get better historical treatment in future than she has had in the past.