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)

Abstract

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 friend George Roberts (c. 1804–1860), Lyme Regis historian and schoolmaster, and from, most probably, a manuscript memoir by his father, the geologist William Buckland (1784–1856), recalling the day of the 1800 lightning strike on a group including Anning. This throws new light on their networking, William Buckland’s dementia, and George Roberts’s activities, including his original observation of the resting-site fidelity of limpets (Patella) and his final years.