...possessing in abundance that essential quality that characterizes our species, a ceaselessly enquiring mind."

Dorothea Bate - have you heard of her? In 1898 at the age of nineteen and entirely home educated she walked into the Museum of Natural History in South Kensington and demanded they hire her. For anyone to do that - let a lone a young woman - was unprecedented, but Dorothea backed up her attitude with an amazing amount of knowledge on ornithology and paleontology. She became a well known and highly regarded fossil hunter and worked for the museum for the rest of her life.

A whole scientific career - a whole different life - because she was brave enough to follow her passion and demand respect for her knowledge. It's really incredibly impressive and I'm so glad that I found Karolyn Shindler's wonderful biography of her, Discovering Dorothea.

Nearly all of Dorothea's personal papers were destroyed in a fire at her sister's home after death, so Shindler used her professional journals and letters to write the book. She admits more than once that this leaves her uncertain as to romantic entanglements (some of the letters hint at such but this being the early 20th century, a hint is all you get) and her relationship with her family. Dorothea was close to them, visiting often, etc., but at more than one point her parents physically reined her in, refusing to allow her to travel, refusing even to let her go to London and the museum for months at a time. When her sister got engaged everything stopped so she could assist in the wedding, even though she had boxes of fossils waiting at the museum for detailed analysis and reports. It was only after her death, in 1951 at nearly 70, when the accolades began pouring in that her brother and sister had a clue of what she accomplished. When you think of how hard it must have been for her to craft this career without anything other than cursory support (she never married although she did have many close friendships with others in her profession along the way), it is really amazing. This is exactly the sort of globe trotting adventurer/scientist that I wish more people knew about today - Dorothea's story gives you a lot of faith in the human spirit. She did so much and it wasn't easy, but she did it anyway and her work has stood the test of time. She deserves to be better remembered, especially by the museum she dedicated so much of her life to, but Shindler's highly readable biography is a good start. Wonderful stuff. (Here's a review from the Prehistoric Society.)

(There's also an utterly obnoxious review from the Guardian that I link to only because I can not believe what some of it says:

Twenty years ago, though, Bate would have been rescued from obscurity with a shortish monograph, published by Virago or perhaps the Women's Press. She might have got a book to herself or she could have found herself in the company of other "pioneering" women, travellers or scientists from the 19th and early 20th centuries. There would have been stories about sloshing through mud in ankle-length skirts and tapping crocodiles smartly on the nose with rolled umbrellas. Disappointing brothers and over-protective mothers would have made a brief appearance, as would a best friend who might or might not have been a lover. Women such as Bate were busy being "reclaimed", not just for their own sakes, but for the growing industry of "women's studies" which required a set of alternative icons to replace the dead white males, such as David Livingstone and Charles Darwin, who ran firmly down the central spine of British history.

The reviewer also refers to Dorothea as "doughty". The whole thing is insulting and immature and completely not related in any way to Shindler's fine biography. Talk about an ax to grind!) I must say that I thought Shindler did a very good job of writing the book without the sort of personal resources many other biographers have. And I didn't think she interjected herself into the story that often - in fact I like knowing how biographers come across their information especially when it is somewhere unusual (like a personal letter from Dorothea found in the professional papers of one of her friends.)