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

Abstract

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. It is neither original nor reliable, and introduced errors into the Anning literature which are still problematic. The methodology of attribution of anonymous articles is discussed.