Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

Set in the same period as Jane Austen's novels, this book tells the story of two women who were not part of the Assembly Room crowd.

Two women with dirty hands and ruined gloves who spend their days grubbing about on the beach at Lyme Regis looking for fossils. Not a suitable way for a gentle lady to spend her days, but Elizabeth Philpot is resigned to her fate of being a life-long spinster and has long since given up on doing the social rounds looking for a suitable husband. At the start of the book, Mary Anning is a young girl who pushes her way into Elizabeth's life after she discovers that Elizabeth has started to collect fossils. Mary and her brother spend their days picking up ammonites and 'devil's toenails' (gryphaea) from the beach and selling them to passing tourists to try and earn enough to keep the family from the workhouse, and she has never met a woman of Elizabeth's standing who was prepared to do such a thing. Under any other circumstances they would never have become friends, but fossils bring them together.

Mary Anning was a real person, and not a fictional character, and she was the first person to discover a complete dinosaur skeleton embedded in the rocks, although she was not always credited with her finds. Those who bought her specimens tended to take all the glory and her name was often omitted from the academic papers written off the back of her discoveries.

I thought this book captured the period in history very well and the characters felt authentic with thoughts and actions appropriate to the time. Clearly the author had done a great deal of research, and although this is a fictionalised account, the story is based on historical fact.

Comments

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