Curiosity

Author Essay

Ten of Joan Thomas’s favourite books:

I came to the subject of Curiosity as a non-scientist and a non-historian, so as you can imagine, I read like crazy. This project was a great excuse to reread Thomas Hardy (whose novels are set in the Dorset of Mary Anning’s time) and Jane Austen (who I viewed as my guide to Henry De la Beche’s world). 

Among the books that inspired and taught me, here’s a list of my particular favourites. The first five are novels and the last five nonfiction. 

The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles.  A delicious critique of 19th century society written in brilliant imitation of the 19th century novel. And set, of course, in Mary Anning’s town of Lyme Regis. The 1981 film version was shot there (you’ll remember Meryl Streep in a hooded cape at the end of the Cobb).  Interestingly, John Fowles wrote that Mary Anning was the secret heroine of The French Lieutenant’s Woman . . . whatever he meant by that! 

Darwin’s Shooter by Roger McDonald. Syms Covington was a seventeen year-old seaman on the voyage of the Beagle when Charles Darwin hired him as his servant.  An odd fellow, Charles Darwin wrote, but they became friends.  This novel is written from Covington’s point of view, and it’s a marvel of fresh and inventive language. It imagines the voyage as well as Covington’s struggles, as a deaf old man in Australia, to come to terms with Darwin’s theories. 

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey.  Oscar (what an endearing character!) also ends up in Australia, but his childhood is spent on the Devon coast, where he’s prey to the fanatical whims of his widowed father, a naturalist studying marine life along that shore.  In writing Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey drew heavily on Father and Son by Edmund Gosse, a memoir about the gifted 19th century naturalist Philip Henry Gosse. I highly recommend both Oscar and Lucinda and Father and Son.

Persuasion by Jane Austen. Austen holidayed in Lyme Regis in 1804 and wrote vividly about the town in letters to her sister. She mentioned visiting a shop where a cabinet-maker, assumed to be Mary Anning’s father, tried to overcharge her for a repair; Mary would have been five at the time. Jane Austen loved Lyme Regis and set part of Persuasion in the town, where Louisa Musgrave falls off the Cobb and Anne Elliot gets to show off her emergency-response skills.       
Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth.  Among prominent historical novels, Sacred Hunger is a tour de force. It recounts the story of an 18th century Liverpool family that sets out to make its fortune by investing in a slaving ship, and the consequent voyage of the Africans their agents capture.  Moving back and forth between these worlds, Unsworth brilliantly explores the moral issues of the times.  

The Map That Changed the World by Simon Winchester.  A wonderful popular history that tells the story of William Smith, another 19th century working class scientist whose work was stolen by his social superiors. William Smith realized that fossils could be used to trace and date geological layers, and he created the first, beautifully hand-tinted geological maps of Britain. The illustrations in this book are so fine!  

The Hummingbird Cabinet: A Rare and Curious History of Romantic Collectors by Judith Pascoe. A fascinating study of the English frenzy for collecting that put a cabinet filled with fossils or dessicated hummingbirds in every 19th century drawing room. Judith Pascoe includes an entertaining account of the  Mary Anning symposium chaired by John Fowles in 1999. Her own thinking about Mary Anning is fresh and thought-provoking.

The Dragon Seekers by Christopher McGowan. By one of Canada’s prominent paleontologists, this highly readable books tells the story of the circle of Pre-Darwin fossilists trying to make sense of a spate of discoveries during an exciting period in English scientific history. The Dragon Seekers was a great resource for me regarding the personalities that figure in Curiosity:  Anning, De la Beche, Conybeare, and Buckland. 

The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Paleontology by Martin J. S. Rudwick. Martin Rudwick’s books are a gift to nonscientists who are curious about how fossils were interpreted through the ages.  You might also like Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Images of the Prehistoric World.

Charles Darwin, a New Life by John Bowlby. Bowlby was a psychiatrist, and was drawn to this subject by a desire to unravel the riddle of Darwin’s numerous (and probably psychosomatic) illnesses.  On Darwin’s personality and family life, this biography is insightful and moving. On the times and the gradual emergence of evolutionary thinking, a rich story full of compelling characters.  
 
– Joan Thomas