Remarkable Creatures

Abstract

In this novel, two enthusiastic fossil-collectors, Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, figures of both history and fiction, maintain an active relationship with great scientists of the Victorian era, including Cuvier and Lyell. The novel uses the interaction between History and Literature to re-examine the place of women in the Victorian Era, by conferring upon them the liberty of action which women at that time did not enjoy. Or, to put this in a different way, its principal purpose is to convey a feminist view of the role of women in the advance of nineteenth-century Science, whilst giving them their rightful place in the restricted circle of great European scientists.