Less hidden from history than all that

Jan 17, 2022 10:49


I suspect that the ONLY woman in science who will NEVER be described as 'hidden from history' and 'written out of the history books' is Marie Curie, right?
But there are honestly quite a number of women in history (in science and other fields)who may not be the top Known Names but have not been Totally Forgotten.
Among whom I would seriously put Mary Anning, having been put into a fume by somebody tweeting: 'A scientist and pioneer of paleontology, left out of the history books because she was female and working class. Finally getting her rightful statue down the road from me in Lyme Regis.'
I depose that a woman of whatever social class whose portrait with a basket of fossils, her geological hammer, and her little dog is in the Natural History Museum London is hardly a neglected unknown figure.
I also did a quick ngram search on Google Books and there were a vast number of mentions in later Victorian literature (including improving tales for the little ones), and a ship named after her on Lloyds Register!!! and well on into the twentieth century, including (short) biographies, throughout each decade.*
As for Lyme Regis I assume that it is entirely already chokka with Mary Anning knickknackery, postcards of the painting, etc.
Yes, okay, there are a lot of statues of men of whom one now goes 'who he?' or, on finding out, wishes to throw him in the water, and fewer statues to women who deserve commemoration.
But to say Mary Anning is Hidden From History is a bit like saying Elizabeth Gaskell is a forgotten novelist.
*ETA:She was in the Dictionary of National Biography 1901 edition (I think it was, to be fair, one of the early supplements): well before they started looking around and going 'oops, this is the DNB of DWMs'.

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women, unexamined-assumptions, scientists, history, memorials, commemoration, facile-preconceptions, class, venting

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