Was this the start of women creating space for themselves in the field of science? In the fields, gardens and rockpools…
My novel-in-progress, Experiment on a Girl, about a mysterious near-future experiment set on a lonely south coast, is partly inspired by real-life girls foraging for seaweeds. They were the scientists of their day— in the days when societies wouldn’t let women attend meetings but would happily take credit for their specimens and wise observations. These include Margaret Gatty, who gathered seaweed on the Sussex shore in 1848, while convalescing and taking the sea air – she was suffering exhaustion as a consequence of many pregnancies. While in Hastings, she met William Henry Harvey, a leading botanist specialising in algae, and became slightly obsessed with marine biology. Margaret went on to write British Seaweeds, published in 1872, which would be used as a reference text well into the 1950s.
The herbarium pictured belonged to Emily Dickinson, compiled when she was a student at Amherst, and now in the collection at Harvard.
Kim Lasky 