Sarah Bowdich Biography

Sarah Eglonton Bowdich Lee, née Wallis (1791-1856) was an English writer, illustrator, traveller, zoologist, botanist, and pteridologist.

Sarah Eglonton Wallis was born on 10 September 1791, the only daughter of John Eglinton Wallis of Colchester.

In 1813, she married the naturalist Thomas Edward Bowdich, whose interests in nature, travel, and adventure she shared.

In 1819, they went to Paris to visit Baron Cuvier; Thomas had previously visited him in 1818 with a letter of introduction obtained from Dr. William Elford Leach of the British Museum. They spent most of the next four years in Paris studying his collections.

In 1823, on their final trip to Africa, they visited Madeira on their way, but her husband died on the Gambia River on 10 January 1824.

Left with three children, she struggled to support her family as an author. Early in her widowhood, Mrs Bowdich often visited Baron Cuvier in Paris, where he treated her almost like a daughter; upon his death in 1832, she wrote a memoir of his life.

In 1826, she married Robert Lee and, in subsequent years published under the name Mrs. Robert Lee.

In 1854, she was granted a civil list pension of £50 per year. In 1856, she died at Erith while visiting her daughter Eugenia.

Of her numerous works, perhaps the four most important are Taxidermy (1820) an exhaustive treatment which came to a sixth edition in 1843; Excursions in Madeira and Porto Santo (1825), a work of natural history; The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain (1825), illustrated by the author,  and Memoirs of Baron Cuvier (1833).