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Book Review of Remarkable Creatures

Remarkable Creatures
donnatella avatar reviewed on + 11 more book reviews


I loved this book about two women, friends and sometimes rivals, who have an interest in natural history (one even discovers dinosaur fossils) at a time when women were barred from the institutions discussing what they did and contributed to science. The most frustrating part, for me, is that there was nothing Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot could do to really change this aspect of their world. Because Mary likes to find things, she is stuck in spinsterhood, while Elizabeth and two of her sisters are also left unmarried because they are plain and the family only had enough money to marry off one daughter. On the bright side, Mary had her amazing discoveries and Elizabeth her fossil fish collection.