Sarah Bowdich Lee (1791-1856) and Pioneering Perspectives on Natural History

History from below uncovers overlooked protagonists contributing to (inter)national endeavour often against considerable odds. Mrs T. Edward Bowdich then Mrs R. Lee (17911856) is indicative. When women allegedly cannot participate in early nineteenth-century scientific exploration, discovery and publication, Sarahs multiple specialist contributions to French and British natural history have attracted no book-length study. This first appraisal of Sarahs unbroken production of discipline-changing scientific work over three decades in modern ichthyology, in historical geography of West Africa and in the next-generational dissemination of expert scientific knowledge does more than fill this gap. The book also pivotally investigates the intercultural, interdisciplinary and multi-genre reach of Sarahs pioneering perspectives and contributions, and how she could achieve her work independently in her own name(s) over three decades. Sarahs larger significance is then to provide a very different narrative for women at work in expert nineteenth-century natural history-making. By everywhere challenging the secondary, minor and domestic frames for womens contributions of the period, the pioneering perspectives of Sarahs story also provide alternative paradigms to the leaky-pipeline modelstill informing womens careers and work in STEM(M) today.