MARY MORLAND IN THE TIME OF DINOSAUR DISCOVERY

Before the word dinosaurexisted, a young female fossilist helped identify the creatures.

How can a biographer truly know a subject’s unrecorded emotions? With this immediate and engaging account, Kurtz solves that problem by asking readers how they might feel were they to experience what Mary Morland (1797-1857) went through, like being expected to sit decorously in a parlor rather than go outside exploring or being sent to live with friends after her mother’s death. Immersing readers in historical context, Kurtz also challenges the conventions of the time by posing cheeky questions about whether Mary met these social expectations, then answering confidently in the negative. Instead, Mary collected shells and fossils, illustrated books by her husband, fossilist William Buckland, and traveled Europe with him, meeting scientists and visiting fossil sites. In Kurtz’s perky prose, Mary springs to life as independent, curious, and relatable. Though the author emphasizes her subject’s collaboration with Buckland, she acknowledges that women in science were usually unrecognized at the time. Nothing in the text indicates Mary’s or her husband’s English nationality, though we might deduce it from the author’s note. Potter’s delicate pastel illustrations evoke the naïve art of the period, as well as its social setting. One image depicts Mary’s many children romping in their “household of chaos.” These scenes perfectly suit the text’s project of relevance and inspiration.

A delightful STEAM biography that spotlights a female scientist who deserves to be better known.