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Journal article
Somerset ichthyosaurs and Quaker philanthropy: Alfred Gillett, William Stephens Clark and the geological museum in the Crispin Hall, Street.
In 1885, William Stephens Clark (1839-1925) built and opened the Crispin Hall in the village of Street, Somerset, to house its Working Men's Club & Institute. The new complex provided a room for a geological museum set up by Clark's cousin Alfred Gillett (1814-1904), and formally opened in 1887 with...Taylor, Michael A
Crispin Hall, Street, William Stephens Clark , Geological Museum, Quaker philanthropy, museology, ichthyosaurs , social improvement, C. & J. Clark Ltd, and Alfred Gillett
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Magazine article
Bringing Hugh Miller's The Old Red Sandstone to a new generation of readers
The 2023 edition of The Old Red Sandstone is the first truly new one for a century. It is in two main parts: a facsimile reprint of Miller’s original first edition of 1841, with explanatory notes added, and a book-length ‘Critical Study’ of Miller’s work by the authors Ralph O’Connor...Taylor, Michael A
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Magazine article
Captain Waring and the Great House on Broad Street
Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
The geological and historical milieu of an ornamental cephalopod limestone (‘orthoceratite limestone’, Ordovician, Sweden) used in the Clerk Mausoleum (1684), St Mungo's Kirkyard, Penicuik, Scotland
A slab of cephalopod limestone bears a dedicatory Latin inscription on the mausoleum built around 1684 by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik (1649–1722) for his wife Elizabeth Henderson (1658–83) at St Mungo's Church, Penicuik, near Edinburgh, Scotland. The stone is identified on sedimentological and palaeontological evidence and historical context as... -
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Journal article
The Life of Mary Anning, Fossil Collector of Lyme Regis: a Contemporary Biographical Memoir by George Roberts
Despite the modern celebrity of the fossil collector Mary Anning (1799–1847) of Lyme Regis and her frequent use as an icon in scientific education and popularization, there are few accounts of her life by her contemporaries. We report here a previously unpublished anonymous manuscript memoir of Anning's life, in the...Taylor, Michael A ; Benton, Michael J
George Roberts, Lyme Regis, Athenæum, and Mary Anning obituary
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Book
Hugh Miller: stonemason, geologist, writer
Hugh Miller was born in 1802 in Cromarty, Ross-shire. He started his working life as a stonemason’s apprentice; he later became a social commentator and crusader. He also inspired in others an interest in fossils. His was a household name in his lifetime, not only in Scotland but across the...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Science in a Somerset Quaker community: Alfred Gillett (1814-1904) fossil collecting and kinship networks in and around Street
Alfred Gillett (1814-1904) was a son of John Gillett, a Langport shopkeeper, and his wife Martha, part of a complex network of families which formed the core of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in eastern and south-eastern Somerset. He went into trade as an ironmonger. In 1841 he became...Taylor, Michael A ; Berry , Charlotte
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Journal article
Hugh’s printing protégé becomes his publisher. The story of Alexander Strachan or Strahan, publisher of The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller
I am researching Hugh Miller’s unusual publishing arrangements, including the frequency with which his firm, Miller & Fairly, printed his books for their Edinburgh publishers before and after his death. The obvious exception is Peter Bayne’s family-approved The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller (1871), printed in London for Strahan...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Hugh’s printing protégé becomes his publisher. The story of Alexander Strachan or Strahan, publisher of The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller.
I am researching Hugh Miller’s unusual publishing arrangements, including the frequency with which his firm, Miller & Fairly, printed his books for their Edinburgh publishers before and after his death. The obvious exception is Peter Bayne’s family-approved The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller (1871), printed in London for Strahan...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Dating the publication of Hugh Miller’s The testimony of the rocks (1857)
Assessing the precise publication dates of nineteenth-century books is difficult. Common problems include inadequate, inaccurate and confusing title-page information, and misleading advertisements. It is better to use multiple lines of evidence rather than a single source. The first Scottish and English edition of The testimony of the rocks, by Hugh...Taylor, Michael A ; O’Connor, R ; Overstreet, L K
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Journal article
The unusual printing and publishing arrangements of Hugh Miller (1802–1856)
John Johnstone was an Edinburgh printer and publisher, from 1849 in partnership with Robert Hunter. In 1839, Johnstone and the printer Robert Fairly established a separate firm, Johnstone & Fairly, to publish the Witness, a newspaper edited by the geologist Hugh Miller. The firm became Miller & Fairly in 1844...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, and the Great Storm of 1824
During the Great Storm of 1824, the house and fossil shop of Mary Anning (1799-1847), fossil collector of Lyme Regis, in Cockmoil Square, was supposedly flooded. The popular but physically unlikely story is probably based on misreading Anning's report of flooding in her brother Joseph's premises, and copying a tale...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Three memoirs of Hugh Miller (1802–1856) by his son Hugh Miller FGS
Hugh Miller FGS (1850–1896) wrote a set of three memoirs on his father Hugh Miller (1802–1856), geologist, writer and newspaper editor. The first two are successive versions of a text written about 1883 to accompanya portrait of the elder Miller by the pioneering photographers David Octavius Hill (1802–1870)and RobertAdamson(1821–1848).The second...Taylor, Michael A
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Book chapter
Hugh Miller’s Palace of Printing
The writer, self-taught geologist and stonemason Hugh Miller (1802-1856) was one of Scotland’s finest nature writers. Born in Cromarty, his works made him a household name, and to this day his lyrical style transports readers to stand beside him at the rock-face. Celebrating his legacy, this anthology brings together prose...Taylor, Michael A
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Other
Memoir on Hugh Miller (1802–1856) by his son Hugh Miller (1850–1896) in "Calotypes by D. O. Hill and R. Adamson: illustrating an early stage in the development of photography. Selected from his collection by Andrew Elliot", 1928. Transcribed and annotated by Michael A. Taylor 2017.
Memoir on Hugh Miller (1802–1856) by his son Hugh Miller (1850–1896) in "Calotypes by D. O. Hill and R. Adamson: illustrating an early stage in the development of photography. Selected from his collection by Andrew Elliot". Printed for private circulation, Edinburgh, 1928. (pages 13-18). Transcribed and annotated by Michael. A....Miller, Hugh ; Taylor, Michael A
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Book
Scotland’s beginnings: Scotland through time.
Did you know that Scotland began under an iceberg-laden sea near the South Pole hundreds of millions of years ago? The journey north of the land we now call Scotland is an astounding tale of great mountains, subtropical rainforests, coral reefs, howling deserts, ammonite-inhabited seas, high lava plateaus and scouring...Taylor, Michael A ; Kitchener, Andrew C
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Book
Hugh Miller: stonemason, geologist, writer
Hugh Miller was born in 1802 in Cromarty, Ross-shire. He started his working life as a stonemason’s apprentice; he later became a social commentator and crusader. His was a household name in his lifetime, not only in Scotland but across the English-speaking world. A recent revival in Scottish history and...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
A very local hero
Profiles 19th century amateur palenteologist Hugh Miller. His discoveries of fossils in the Firth of Cromarty in Scotland; Notice of his fossils by the paleontologist Louis Agassiz, and recognition Miller received by Agassiz; His life in Scotland; His decision to drop out of high school to become a stonemason and...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Functional significance of bone ballastin in the evolution of buoyancy control strategies by aquatic tetrapods
The primary function of pachyostosis, pachyosteo‐sclerosis, and osteosclerosis may be to act as ballast, not so much (as previously suggested) to neutralise the buoyancy of existing lungs, but to allow enlargement of the lungs. Enlarged lungs cause an animal to lose buoyancy more rapidly with depth. They also provide a...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Hugh Miller's collection - a memorial to a great geological Scot
Some would argue that Hugh Miller's greatest memorial lies in his writings and his enduring reputation. Nevertheless, as well as the Nelson's Column style monument overlooking his birthplace cottage preserved by the National Trust for Scotland at Cromarty, he also enjoys four other statues or portrait busts. Appropriately for an...Taylor, Michael A ; Gostwick, M
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Book chapter
Locomotion in Mesozoic marine reptiles
Palaeobiology: A Synthesis was widely acclaimed both for its content and production quality. Ten years on, Derek Briggs and Peter Crowther have once again brought together over 150 leading authorities from around the world to produce Palaeobiology II. Using the same successful formula, the content is arranged as a series...Taylor, Michael A
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Book chapter
What is in a 'national' museum? The challenges of collecting policies at the National Museums of Scotland
Collecting is a key function of museums. Its apparent simplicity belies a complexity of questions and issues which make all collecting imprecise and unrepresentative. Museums and the Future of Collecting exposes the many meanings of collections, the different perspectives taken by different cultures, and the institutional response to the collecting...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Dr Arthur Cruickshank [obituary]
Taylor, Michael A ; Benton, M J
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Journal article
The Hugh Miller Museum in 1902
Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Further information on the life of Charles Moore (1815-1881), Somerset geologist.
Copp et al. (1999) published an account of the life and work of Charles Moore, the Victorian amateur geologist whose fine collection is now held mainly by the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and the Somerset County Museum, Taunton. This note aims to amend and extend some information in...Torrens, H. S. ; Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Sea dragons of Avalon
Tourists driving through the village2 of Street on their way to Glastonbury might well wonder at the representation of a skeleton on the road sign. Could this perhaps be a warning that this stretch of the A39 is a roadkill hotspot? I (Stig Walsh, once a local inhabitant) suspect that...Walsh, Stig A ; Taylor, Michael A
Street, ichthyosaur, plesiosaur, Somerset, Triassic, and Jurassic
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Journal article
200 years of West Country sea dragons: Thomas Hawkins and his fossil legacy
Public lectures and seminar, Street, 22-24 July 2010Taylor, Michael A ; Noè, L. F. ; Hill, David B
ichthyosaur, Jurassic, Triassic, and plesiosaur
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Journal article
Country Reports. United Kingdom. INHIGEO.
Taylor, Michael A
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Book chapter
Miller's most important geological discovery’: Archibald Geikie (1835–1924) as pupil and memorialist of Hugh Miller (1802–56)
Hugh Miller, stonemason turned writer, newspaper editor and geologist, became the young Archibald Geikie’s friend and geological mentor, encouraged his first research and presentation to a learned society, and recommended him to the Geological Survey, thus laying the foundations for a career that reached the top of British science. Geikie...Taylor, Michael A
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Book chapter
Autobiography and documentable fact in the family background and religious affiliation of Archibald Geikie (1835–1924)
In his autobiography of 1924, Archibald Geikie (1835–1924) suppressed basic information about his family and religious beliefs. Investigation reveals a more complete picture of those aspects of Geikie’s life. He was brought up in a strongly religious family, of Congregational affiliation, which he himself followed as a young man. His...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Charles W. Peach, palaeobotany and Scotland
The move south from Wick to the city of Edinburgh in 1865, some four years after retirement from the Customs service, provided Charles W. Peach with new opportunities for fossil-collecting and scientific networking. Here he renewed and maintained his interest in natural history and made significant palaeobotanical collections from the...Anderson, Lyall I ; Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Country Reports. United Kingdom. INHIGEO.
Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
The Victorian Sunday, daylight and naturalists
Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
J.G. Goodchild's Guide to the Geological Collections in the Hugh Miller cottage, Cromarty of 1902
This reproduces, in facsimile, the Guide to the Geological Collections in the Hugh Miller cottage, Cromarty of 1902 by J.G. Goodchild.Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I ; Goodchild, J G
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Journal article
Guide to the Hugh Miller collection in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, c. 1920
Around 1920, the retired Geological Survey worker Benjamin Neeve Peach (1842-1926) wrote a guide to the permanent exhibition, which he had just completed, of fossils from the collection of Hugh Miller (1802-1856) in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh (now part of National Museums Scotland). This guide also incorporated an older...Peach, Benjamin N ; Traquair, Ramsay H ; Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
The first known stereophotographs of Hugh Miller's cottage and the building of the Hugh Miller Monument, Cromarty, 1859
Two early stereophotographs of Hugh Miller's cottage at Cromarty have separate provenances and their original photographer is unknown, but they were apparently taken at the same session and from almost the same location. One shows the Hugh Miller Monument under construction. The monument's planning, funding and building are outlined. It...Taylor, Michael A ; Morrison-Low, A D
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Journal article
The museums of a local, national and supranational hero: Hugh Miller's collections over the decades
Hugh Miller (1802-1856), Scottish geologist, newspaper editor and writer, is a perhaps unique example of a geologist with a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace cottage, in Cromarty, northern Scotland. He finally housed his geological collection, principally of Scottish fossils, in a purpose-built museum at his house in Portobello,...Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
The appeal circular for the purchase of Hugh Miller's collection, 1858
This reproduces, in facsimile, the only known copy of the Proposal to Purchase the Museum of the Late Hugh Miller for deposition in the Natural History Museum (later part of the National Museums Scotland). It is datable on internal evidence to 1858. This particular copy belonged to Charles W. Peach...Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
A memoir of Hugh Miller (1802–1856) attributed to his son Hugh Miller FGS (1850–1896)
A manuscript memoir of Hugh Miller (1802–1856), geologist, writer and newspaper editor, is attributed to his son Hugh Miller FGS (1850–1896). It is published here, apparently for the first time. It was written sometime in 1881–1896, more probably 1882–1895. Its intended place of publication is discussed. It is an interesting...Taylor, Michael A
nineteenth century, Scotland, Cromarty, biography, and Hugh Miller's Birthplace Cottage and Museum
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Journal article
An integrated approach to understanding the role of the long neck in plesiosaurs
The evolution and function of the long neck in plesiosaurs, and how the problems associated with stiffness or flexibility were overcome during feeding, or rapid swimming during predator avoidance, are explored, and a new interpretation for the function of the plesiosaur neck is presented. Based on the anatomy of the...Noè, Leslie F ; Taylor, Michael A ; Gómez-Pérez, Marcela
palaeoecology, Plesiosauria, evolution, filter feeding, long neck, functional anatomy, and Sauropterygia
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Journal article
Tennyson and the geologists part 2: saurians and the Isle of Wight
It is often observed that Tennyson’s poetry was profoundly influenced by his reading in astronomy, geology and science in general, and evolutionary thought before and after Darwin. This reflected the period’s intense crossover between science and what would today be called literature. The scientific paper was approaching its modern format,...Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
Hugh Miller: fossils, landscape and literary geology
The bicentenary of the birth of Hugh Miller (1802–1856) in Cromarty (in northern Scotland) has enabled a reappraisal of this fine spare-time geologist, in turn stonemason and banker, and eventually Edinburgh newspaper editor. In Cromarty he had the usual advantages and limitations of a local collector far from metropolitan centres....Knell, Simon J. ; Taylor, Michael A
Old Red sandstone, Jurassic, Hugh Miller, Museums, Literary geology, Fossil collecting, History of vertebrate paleontology, Devonian, and History of geology
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Journal article
Country Reports. United Kingdom. INHIGEO.
Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Mary Anning (1799-1847) and the photograph The Geologists ascribed to William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877)
A photograph of 1843, titled The Geologists, has recently been suggested to portray Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, and Henry De la Beche of the Geological Survey. This, and another of the same outcrop, were taken about 1843 at Chudleigh, Devon, almost certainly by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877). The...Taylor, Michael A ; Levitt, S
William Henry Fox Talbot, Devon., Astley Cooper, Henry De la Beche, Mary Anning, geological work, and photograph
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Journal article
‘Where is the damned collection?’ Charles Davies Sherborn’s listing of named natural science collections and its successors. In: Michel E. (Ed) Anchoring Biodiversity Information: from Sherborn to the 21st century and beyond
C. D. Sherborn published in 1940, under the imprint of Cambridge University Press but at his own expense, Where is the – Collection? This idiosyncratic listing of named natural science collections, and their fates, was useful, but incomplete, and uneven in its accuracy. It is argued that those defects were...Taylor, Michael A
museum, biology, Charles Davies Sherborn, taxonomy, collections, and geology
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Journal article
Keith Leask and his biography of Hugh Miller
Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Mrs Alicia Moore, dedicatee of Henry Rowland Brown’s 1859 guidebook Beauties of Lyme Regis
The 1859 second edition of the guidebook The Beauties of Lyme Regis, by Henry Rowland Brown (1837-1921) of Lyme Regis, was dedicated to ‘Mrs Moore’. She is identified here as Alicia Anne Moore née Radford (bap. 1790-1873), Sheffield-born author and novelist, who was descended from the Lymen (or Leman or...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
A token found at Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, apparently associated with Mary Anning (1799–1847), fossil collector
A lettered metal disc bearing the date 1810 and found on the beach at Lyme Regis appears, but cannot conclusively be proven, to be a childhood possession of the young Mary Anning (1799–1847), later the famous fossil collector whose name and age it bears. An alternative, but problematical, possibility is...Taylor, Michael A ; Bull, Richard
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Journal article
The anatomy of Stratesaurus (Reptilia, Plesiosauria) from the lowermost Jurassic of Somerset, United Kingdom
We provide a complete description of one of the oldest plesiosaurians, Stratesaurus taylori from the earliest Hettangian of the United Kingdom. At least 25 apomorphies distinguish S. taylori from the sympatric Thalassiodracon hawkinsii, to which all three specimens of S. taylori were originally referred. Several features of the skull of...Benson, Roger B J ; Evans, Mike ; Taylor, Michael A
digital data, phenotype, visualization, functional analysis, three-dimensional models, and computed tomography
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Journal article
Country Reports. United Kingdom. INHIGEO.
Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Joseph Clark III's reminiscences about the Somerset fossil reptile collector Thomas Hawkins (1810-1889): " Very near the borderline between eccentricity and criminal insanity"
An account of Thomas Hawkins (1810-1889) of Glastonbury has been located in the memoirs of Joseph Clark III at the Clark Archive, Street. It is transcribed and published. It provides a valuable perspective on the character and life of this important fossil collector.Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Rediscovery of an Ichthyosaurus breviceps Owen, 1881 sold by Mary Anning (1799-1847) to the surgeon Astley Cooper (1768-1841) and figured by William Buckland (1784-1856) in his Bridgewater Treatise
An extant specimen of Ichthyosaurus breviceps Owen, 1881 is identified as that sold by Mary Anning the younger, fossil collector of Lyme Regis, to the eminent surgeon Sir Astley Cooper in 1831. It was figured by William Buckland in the prestigious Bridgewater Treatise Geology and mineralogy considered with reference to...Taylor, Michael A
Ichthyosauria, William Buckland, Astley Cooper, Lower Jurassic, Dorset., Lyme Regis, and Mary Anning
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Journal article
An account of Mary Anning (1799-1847), fossil collector of Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, published by Henry Rowland Brown (1837-1921) in the second edition (1859) of Beauties of Lyme Regis
The publication of the now rare second edition of the guidebook The Beauties of Lyme Regis... by Lyme native Henry Rowland Brown (1837-1921) is dated to 1859. The known link of Brown’s family to Anning’s increases the significance of his book as a source for her, particularly the second edition...Taylor, Michael A ; Torrens, H. S.
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Journal article
An anonymous account of Mary Anning (1799-1847), fossil collector of Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, published in All the year round in 1865, and its attribution to Henry Stuart Fagan (1827-1890), schoolmaster, parson and author
An article on the fossil collector Mary Anning (1799-1847), published in All the Year Round in 1865, and much used in Anning literature, is usually ascribed to Charles Dickens. In fact it was by the Reverend Henry Stuart Fagan (1827-1890), grammar school headmaster, Church of England parson, and literary man....Taylor, Michael A ; Torrens, H. S.
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Journal article
An anonymous account of Mary Anning (1799-1847), fossil collector of Lyme Regis, England, published in Chamber's Journal in 1857, and its attribution to Frank Buckland (1826-1880), George Roberts (c.1804-1860) and William Buckland (1784-1856)
The authors of an anonymous article on Mary Anning (1799–1847), published in Chambers’s journal in 1857, are identified to allow the article to be fully evaluated for the first time. Payment was made to the natural-history writer Frank Buckland (1826–1880). However, he incorporated much material from the books of his...Taylor, Michael A ; Torrens, H. S.
history of science, history of geology, nineteenth century, historiography., and history of palaeontology
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Journal article
Country Reports. United Kingdom. INHIGEO.
Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Letter, on commemorative plaques and Hugh Miller
Taylor, Michael A
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Working paper
‘A very able man, of somewhat explosive ... opinions’: the Reverend Henry Stuart Fagan (1827-1890), Church of England parson, Headmaster of Bath Grammar School, literary man, and Irish Home Ruler
The Reverend Henry Stuart Fagan (1827-1890), after a fine career at the City of London School and Oxford University, became headmaster of several grammar schools in succession, lastly at Bath Grammar School from 1858 to 1870 where he also held the linked parish of Charlcombe. His tenure was complicated by...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Palaeontological site conservation and the professional collector
Professional (i.e. commercial) fossil collectors can and do use sites responsibly. They benefit palaeontology by finding new fossils. Control of this collecting is counterproductive on eroding coasts and new exposures opened up by such collectors. Irresponsible professional collectors are not a major cause of damage compared to other collectors, quarry...Taylor, Michael A
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Journal article
Palaeontological site conservation and the law in Britain
The legal situation regarding palaeontological site conservation in Britain is unclear. There is no modern review of the law. Five main areas of concern are identified. Most exsisting laws do not specifically consider the needs of palaeontological conservation. Legislation empowers the Nature Conservancy Council upon policy decisions. The NCC is...Taylor, Michael A ; Harte, J D C
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Journal article
Hugh Miller (1802-1856): the loss of his papers.
Michael Taylor and Lyall Anderson have been considering the fate of Hugh Miller’s manuscripts as part of a wider study of his collections.Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I
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Journal article
Hugh Miller (1802-1856): the catalogue of his fossil collection
Michael Taylor) and Lyall Anderson write: we have observed that one of the specimen numbering systems applied to Miller’s fossil collection was started while the collection was still in family hands – though we are not certain whether this was before his death.Taylor, Michael A ; Anderson, Lyall I