Controversy over Ammonite, a Film by Francis Lee

Having delivered one uplifting gay love story with his 2017 debut feature God's Own Country, director Francis Lee hopes his second movie helps audiences realize "the power of love; the power of a deep, intimate, human relationship; the power of touch; and hope." In the age of the coronavirus and self-isolation, the power of touch feels quite intense right now.

Ammonite, starring Oscar darlings Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, was announced as one of the 2020 Cannes Film Festival selections on Wednesday — even though the in-person gathering in France won't go on as planned this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During a recent interview with EW at the start of LGBTQ Pride Month, Lee briefly addressed the work, which he finished filming just before Hollywood was shuttered in the wake of worldwide lockdowns.

“I’m really excited about it," Lee says over Zoom. "It’s all completely finished. I was very lucky and finished it all before lockdown — just!"

The film, set in a small coastal town in the 1840s, is inspired by the life of fossil-collecting paleontologist Mary Anning (played by Winslet). "It’s not a biopic," Lee clarifies. "It’s just inspired by her life. I was incredibly lucky to work with Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, and they play two women who develop an intense and intimate relationship."

"I was very drawn to that period because of this wonderful research into same-sex female relationships of the period that are all very well documented with letters to each other, demonstrating wonderful, life-long, passionate, intense, emotional relationships," he continued. "And I was fascinated to set this film in a period that was totally patriarchal and where women were completely owned by their fathers or their husbands, and looking at how they live within that world, and also in a world where, at that time, the medical profession believed that women had no sexual-pleasure organs. So, the idea of two women actually in a relationship together was just not a thought anybody ever had within society."

Ultimately, Lee believes this story is about "hope." "It's a very hopeful film," he adds — which also very much defines God's Own Country.

With his first film, Lee told a love story between a closeted farmer, numbing his frustrations with alcohol and casual sex, and the Romanian migrant worker who comes to work on his family's property. "I was talking to Josh [O'Connor] and Alec [Secareanu] last week," Lee says of his two stars, "and I think all of us are still overwhelmed by the response from people with God's Own Country. The film came out in 2017 and it seems as popular now as it was then with people either re-watching it or people discovering it for the first time. And what's been incredible is the way in which people now see the film as part of their lives. Whether or not they go back to re-watch because they want to feel happy or they want to feel sad or they want to live within that relationship and those moments."

Now Neon, which previously released queer films Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Beach Rats, will release Ammonite in the U.S.

Ammonite director says Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan film is about 'the power of love' and 'touch'. By Nick Romano.   Entertainment  Weekly ,   June 4, 2020.

The furore over a film portraying the 19th-century palaeontologist Mary Anning as having a female lover probably tells us more about ourselves than it does about historical accuracy onscreen. Francis Lee’s Ammonite might not be a scrupulously backed-up biopic, but it may just hit on the one thing that so many other accounts of Anning, and other early women in science, have missed: the importance of friendships and collaborations.

Anning, the working-class woman whose fossil discoveries changed the world, and a modern-day icon for women in science, is once again making news. This time, however, it’s not the ancient creatures she unearthed causing the stir. Kate Winslet will play her in the new movie, and her fellow actor Saoirse Ronan has confirmed that her character, widely reported in the press as Frances Bell (a real person and friend of Anning) and Mary Anning are lovers. Cue media frenzy, with plenty of opportunity for outrage over (presumed) historical inaccuracy and claims of sexing-up an already remarkable biography, alongside salacious delight at the thought of a lesbian love affair amid the Lias.

Let’s get one thing straight: there is absolutely no evidence that Anning and Bell were lovers. But getting your knickers in a twist over a lesbian storyline, and crying “historical inaccuracy” on this count only holds water if you assume heterosexuality and/or celibacy for Anning until proven otherwise.

So what do we know? The real Frances Bell was just 14 when she visited Lyme Regis in 1824. She became friends with Anning, 10 years her senior, who taught her about fossils, and helped her create a small personal collection including an ammonite that glittered gold with iron pyrite.

Although brief – Bell died the following year – their friendship seems to have been intense and shot through with vulnerabilty. Letters show that Anning became upset when Bell did not write to her immediately after leaving Lyme Regis. Bell described Anning as one of her two friends, but that time would show “which of these two will prove the most faithful”, a sentence that makes the heart ache for her. But otherwise their short correspondence is characterised by religious observations, and delight over fossils and the British Museum. Sexy it is not.

In contrast, Saoirse Ronan’s character in Ammonite is described as a gentlewoman “encouraged by her husband to get a hobby”, who stays with Anning and learns about fossils. Rather than the 14-year-old Bell, this sounds more like a naive Charlotte Murchison, who came to learn fossiling with Anning at what proved to be the start of a long friendship.

It seems, then, that the Bell in Ammonite is actually an amalgamation of different women who touched Anning’s life – and there are many to choose from. Anning, charismatic and clever, clearly inspired affection. Another young friend, Anna Maria Pinney, wrote: “I really love Mary Anning.” And there were the Philpot sisters, who mentored and nurtured young Anning’s interest in geology, and Mary Buckland.

These women were all active in geological research, corresponding with each other, sharing notes and fossils and ideas. Murchison’s and Buckland’s legacies are mostly obscured by their husbands’ (Roderick and William, respectively) greater fame, but they were linchpins in this network of women connecting Anning with the fashionable academic salons of the day. As previously noted by TrowelBlazers’ Suzanne Pilaar Birch, Anning wasn’t the only 19th-century woman collecting fossils on the seashore.

Anning was a genuine legend in her own time. But, as is true of many working-class historical figures, precious few documents exist to tell us about the detail of her personal life. We instead have to piece together a picture from scattered snippets in the recollections of others. Was she a “prim, pedantic vinegar woman” (Gideon Mantell), or “the proudest, most unyielding spirit … [who] glories in being afraid of no one, and in saying anything she pleases” (her friend Anna Maria Pinney)? This leaves plenty of room for everyone to create their own personal Mary Anning.

Lee’s Ammonite will be another contribution to the rich and varied mythology that has grown up around Lyme Regis’s most famous resident. And, rather than perpetrating a historical inaccuracy, it could be that by putting the women in Anning’s life at the centre of his fictional reimagining, Lee may end up telling a genuinely overlooked truth about the history of geology: the vital contribution of, and collaboration between, women.

• Tori Herridge and Becky Wragg Sykes are co-founders of TrowelBlazers, which tells the forgotten stories of women in geology, palaeontology and archaeology

• This article was amended on 20 March 2019 in the light of the following addendum from the writers:

After publication of this article, spokespeople for Ammonite got in touch with us to confirm that we were correct in guessing that Saoirse Ronan would be playing Charlotte Murchison and not Frances Bell, as has been widely reported. What do we know about Anning and Murchison? After meeting in Lyme Regis in 1825, it was with Murchison that Anning stayed on her one and only trip to London in 1829. Their friendship and correspondence is apparent in 1833, when Anning writes to tell the news of her dog Tray’s death in a landslide.

In casting Ronan, the relative ages of Anning and Murchison have been upended, perhaps allowing for elements of Anning’s other female relationships, including that with Bell, to be drawn upon. And the real Murchison was far more than a wealthy lady whose’s husband thought she should get a hobby. This was the woman of whom the artist Henry De la Beche – also a friend and supporter of Anning’s – wrote “shines the light of science, dispelling the darkness which covers the world”. She also protested against Charles Lyell’s refusal to allow women to attend his geological lecture, and is credited with building her husband’s illustrious career, turning him from a foxhunting dilettante into a serious man of science and eventual director general of the British Geological Survey. Let’s hope Ammonite captures the brilliance and strength of both Murchison and Anning, as well as the many other women, who helped shaped the field of geology from its beginnings.

 Behind a lesbian furore over a famous palaeontologist lies a deeper truth. By  Tori Herridge and Becky Wragg Sykes. The Guardian , March 20, 2019. 

Francis Lee, director of upcoming lesbian romance film Ammonite, has responded to backlash against the project, saying he treats his “truthful” characters with “total respect.”

A number of commentators have taken aim at the film, which stars Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, for representing real-life palaeontologist Mary Anning as a lesbian, and have claimed that there is no evidence to show that she had romantic relationships with women.

“After seeing queer history be routinely ‘straightened’ throughout culture, and given a historical figure where there is no evidence whatsoever of a heterosexual relationship, is it not permissible to view that person within another context…?” – Francis Lee, Ammonite director

However, in a Twitter thread posted yesterday, Lee said that he had become aware of the “huge speculation” around the unfinished film, and said that critics know nothing about the project.

He said that the film “hasn’t even been made yet” and called on commentators to wait for the film to be released before casting judgement.

“After seeing queer history be routinely ‘straightened’ throughout culture, and given a historical figure where there is no evidence whatsoever of a heterosexual relationship, is it not permissible to view that person within another context…?” Lee said.

“Particularly a woman whose work and life were subjected to the worst aspects of patriarchy, class discrimination and gender imbalance…

“As a working class, queer film maker, I continually explore the themes of class, gender, sexuality within my work, treating my truthful characters with utter respect and I hope giving them authentic respectful lives and relationships they deserve.

 “Would these newspaper writers have felt the need to whip up uninformed quotes from self proclaimed experts if the character’s sexuality had been assumed to be heterosexual?

“As film makers we try to make the best work possible and perhaps it would be better to wait until that work actually exists before assuming, presuming or critiquing what that work is and how it depicts its subjects and world.”

Mary Anning made several important discoveries during her lifetime, but her gender and social status undermined her achievements in the eyes of Victorian society.

She never married and had various close friendships with women – however, there is no evidence that she was a lesbian.

This has led to some commentators – and descendants of the palaeontologist – criticising the project for speculating.

In an online discussion quoted in The Telegraph, Anning’s distant niece, Barbara, said: “I believe if Mary Anning was gay she should be portrayed as gay and this should also be by a gay actress.

“But I do not believe there is any evidence to back up portraying her as a gay woman… I believe Mary Anning was abused because she was poor, uneducated and a woman. Is that not enough?”

Similarly, she was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that the lesbian storyline is “pure Hollywood” and said there was “no suggestion that she was a lesbian at all.”

Two other descendants have come forward to criticise the project.

However, palaeobiologist Sam Giles responded to the outcry by saying: “I doubt there would be this much outcry if the film featured Mary Anning in a heterosexual relationship (for which there also seems little evidence). I feel very uncomfortable with the amount of vitriol this has attracted. It may not be intentional but reads as homophobic.”

Francis Lee is the acclaimed director of God’s Own Country, which tells the story of a romantic relationship between two male farmers.

Speaking to Sirius XM about the project, Saoirse Ronan said the women develop a “really beautiful, really intimate relationship” in the film and confirmed that they are lovers.

The Mary Queen of Scots star has expressed enthusiasm at acting opposite Winslet, who famously starred in Titanic, a film Ronan was obsessed with as a child.

“Who’d have thought, when I was eight years old, I’d be kissing Rose one day and I’d get to fall in love with her on a beach?” she told Irish entertainment channel Xposé in January.

Ammonite director Francis Lee defends ‘truthful’ lesbian romance. By  Patrick Kelleher. Pink News , March 18, 2019. 

Tipping the Velvet starts with a woman dropping an oyster between her lover’s pillowy pink lips. It’s not long before the two of them are under the sheets together, one hand gripping onto the bed bannister. The 2002 BBC screen adaptation of the Sarah Waters's novel follows naive Whitstable fishmonger Nancy (Rachael Stirling) as she falls in love with cross-dressing stage impersonator Kitty (Keeley Hawes). Tipping caused a scandal. “Scenes in the drama involve crude sex toys, swearing and sex acts,” the Daily Mail gasped, while other male critics seemed aghast it wasn’t more like all “girl-on-girl” porn scenes: "It was all very tastefully done – unfortunately. In fact, it was rather dull”, wrote Jim Shelley in the Mirror.

Much has changed since 2002. It seems we are much more accepting of cinematic explorations of women loving women, even when they are not back-arching and pillow-fighting their way into impressing the male gaze. The past few years have seen a glut of lesbian period dramas on our screens: many based on true stories, most critically acclaimed, from 2015’s Carol to 2016’s The Handmaiden to 2018’s Lizzie. This year alone, we’ve had the biopics Colette (following the writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette’s rumoured relationship with socialite Georgie Raoul-Duval), The Favourite (Queen Anne’s with Sarah Churchill), Wild Nights with Emily (Emily Dickinson’s with Susan Gilbert) and Vita and Virginia (Virginia Woolf’s with Vita Sackville-West), as well as the post-war romance Tell It to the Bees, Netflix’s Elisa & Marcela, and the BBC One series Gentleman Jack.

There’s more to come, too: from Céline Sciamma’s drama Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Carmilla, an adaptation of the Gothic vampire novella to Francis Lee’s Ammonite, based on the life of palaeontologist Mary Anning, and Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta, which tells the story of Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century lesbian nun

.

But aside from notable titles such as Blue is the Warmest Colour, Rafiki, Disobedience and a handful of badly written softcore frolics at the bottom of a Netflix scroll, significantly fewer modern lesbian love stories are making into the mainstream. So why do filmmakers keep returning to the past to explore romances between womenThere’s more to come, too: from Céline Sciamma’s drama Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Carmilla, an adaptation of the Gothic vampire novella to Francis Lee’s Ammonite, based on the life of palaeontologist Mary Anning, and Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta, which tells the story of Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century lesbian nun.

But aside from notable titles such as Blue is the Warmest Colour, Rafiki, Disobedience and a handful of badly written softcore frolics at the bottom of a Netflix scroll, significantly fewer modern lesbian love stories are making into the mainstream. So why do filmmakers keep returning to the past to explore romances between women? Are we discovering histories erased or forgotten? Or are we just frightened of seeing lesbian love as it exists now?? Are we discovering histories erased or forgotten? Or are we just frightened of seeing lesbian love as it exists now?

Often, these dramas find their erotic tension in lesbianism’s forbidden status. But that’s not to say they reduce these relationships to one-dimensional displays of physical titillation. These stories are typically interested in intimacy in all its prosaic forms: women fall in love over shared interests, they have arguments, they cheat and lie and fall out – just as in any romantic relationship.

In The Favourite, Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne is only at peace when her lover Sarah (Rachel Weisz) is busy bandaging gout-ridden legs, and when Abigail (Emma Stone) is playing with her rabbits or playing under her skirts. “I like it when she puts her tongue inside me,” the Queen gloats later on to a neglected Sarah. In Lizzie, hiding from the glare of an abusive father, love between Miss Borden (Chloë Sevigny) and her servant Bridget (Kristen Stewart) is yearning and tentative: they share misty-eyed glances as Bridget hangs up white cotton bedsheets in the garden, eventually making hay in a barn filled with straw. In Carol, our protagonist (Cate Blanchett) calls the younger Therese (Rooney Mara), “my angel flung out of space” before a four-minute-long sex scene of jaw-biting and interlocking bodies. In Tell it to the Bees, a bee flies out the hive and lands on Lydia's (Holliday Grainger) neck, and Jean (Anna Paquin) leans closer than required to blow it away.

There are, of course, notable and dullish exceptions. Some lesbian period dramas suggests love between women is nothing but girlish frolicking. The guiltiest party here is Eliza & Marcella, where the two women are shown wading through the sea in white petticoats giggling and splashing each other with water like teenage nymphs. “This is real, isn’t it? It’s not a dream?” asks the whispering voiceover, seemingly cut from a lesser Terrence Malick speech. Worse still are the wholly absurd sex scenes, one which involves an octopus and another a naked body wrapped in seaweed. Must all lesbian sex be spiritually ethereal?

Apparently not. Following on from Whit Stillman’s 2016 comic Jane Austen adaptation Love & Friendship, the bulk of these lesbian period dramas are humorous, often described by critics as “romps” for their brusk dialogue and vaudeville jeopardy. In Wild Nights With Emily, Dickenson (Molly Shannon) hands her lover Sue (Susan Ziegler) a poem she inspired. As Sue reads aloud it becomes clear something’s wrong. "One cup flour, add milk--", it appears Emily has written a shopping list: "no, it's on the other side”. In Gentleman Jack, a sour-tongued old woman reveals her plans to coax Anne (Suranne Jones) to “dip into her purse” before smirking, “alongside whatever else she has been dipping into”. Upon seeing a pretty maiden blushing under her cumbersome lilac bonnet, Anne turns to look at us through the camera lens Fleabag-style, raises a brow and winks.

Despite the harsh prejudice of their eras, most of these films avoid turning women into Brokeback Mountain-style victims of gender repression. Colette is a successful socialite whose husband endorses her affairs with women (albeit with the understanding he will steal all her writing). In The Favourite, the raised eyebrows of Queen Anne’s court seem to have little impact on her ability to petulantly wield power. The chief obstacle raised by her desire is that she has to decide which gorgeous lady she wants to live with: the one that lets her eat cake or the one that doesn’t because she cares so deeply about her health. When married women leave Gentleman Jack’s chambers, the only judgement she faces is the pursed lips of her servants. And even in men’s clothes, Jack still manages to be her family’s favourite child.

But for all these films’ frank depictions of sex and romance, it’s worth considering why lesbian dramas are always cloistered behind corsets and crowns, and why contemporary lesbianism struggles to flourish on screen in the same way.

The current wave of these dramas perhaps has its roots in a contemporary desire to re-establish queer histories that have often been erased. These films fill in the blanks. Scholars found that where Emily Dickenson’s poems were dedicated to a “Sam”, the word “Sue” had been rubbed out underneath: it is from here that Wild Nights With Emily takes its narrative. The real Anne Lister of Gentleman Jack is often considered to have been one half of “the first lesbian marriage in Britain” (granted, not a recognised one). Elisa and Marcela also lived a life beyond fiction: in 1901 the partners became the first recorded Spanish same-sex marriage after they managed to convince a priest one of them was a man.

Other times queer histories are invented, or exaggerated. Some historians contest that it was little more than gossip that Queen Anne was romantically entangled with women. Lizzie Bordon might have hacked her parents to pieces with a hammer but there’s no evidence she did it to be with her servant Bridget. And Ammonite, the upcoming biopic of fossil discoverer Mary Anning, invents a plotline that she had a wealthy young lover. Anning’s relatives bristled with this, citing it as unnecessary. Director Francis Lee defended his decision by asking: “Given a historical figure where there is no evidence whatsoever of a heterosexual relationship, is it not permissible to view that person within another context?”

Specific histories aside, the past offers a safe, distant context for explorations of lesbianism; one that enables viewers to feel retroactively progressive. The vast majority of modern audiences would maintain that gay figures from history faced discrimination, even if they hold more divided views over the LGBTQ movement today. Everyone can get on board with a portrayal of two traditionally feminine actresses (who are most often straight in real life) stealing longing glances at each other from over the silverware: a contemporary staging of two lesbians falling in love might actually be more, not less, likely to incur homophobic responses.

It’s easy to retrospectively celebrate transgressive acts that would today seem far less threatening: women living together, falling in love, having sex, holding hands, getting married. We can watch these films and look back with nostalgic righteousness, we can pat ourselves on the back. How awful. It allows us to distract ourselves from the undeniable prejudices lesbians still face today, as LGBTQ hate crimes rise: two lesbians are beaten up on the bus for refusing to kiss each other; an LGBTQ play is cancelled after two cast members are attacked on their way home. While we might be willing to confront homophobia in TV and film, it seems we’re only comfortable imagining misogynistic homophobia when we can safely condemn it to the past, as a curious relic of a former, unenlightened era.

The queering of the period drama is no doubt a victory. We’ve had too many men in breeches trying to impress fathers in airless drawing rooms and young ladies wheeled out to play the piano or display a trembling falsetto to a suitor twice her age. Now the women making snide comments from underneath big hats are make out with each other instead. But a diverse, queer cinematic landscape needs contemporary depictions of LGBTQ romance to flourish, too – including lesbian dramas without the cumbersome bonnets and blushing damsels.

The rise of the lesbian period drama. By Annie Lord.  New Statesman . July 19, 2019.

Lyme Regis is an almost obnoxiously gorgeous town in Dorset in the west of England, perched atop the cliffs of the world-heritage listed Jurassic Coast. Thanks to a campaign set off by a local 10-year-old girl and her mother, the people of this town is raising funds to erect a statue to their famous citizen Mary Anning. As an expert on paleontology, I think this is a brilliant idea.

Mary Anning was born in 1799. Her family was poor – and somewhat tragic. She was named after an older sister who had died in a fire. Her father died when she was barely a teenager, leaving her family dependent on selling Lyme Regis’ abundant ammonites, belamnites and other fossils to tourists. Fossils became the family business – and Mary was the sharpest fossil spotter.

The work was often dangerous: the Jurassic coast’s cliffs are treacherous (Mary’s dog was killed in a mudslide while prospecting). Still in her early 20s, Anning became a legendary fossil hunter. She found the first complete plesiosaur fossil, the first British pterosaur and figured out that coprolites were fossilised dung. In Lyme Regis, she and her family opened “Anning’s fossil depot”, where her fossils were purchased for collections in the United States and Europe.

Many of the great geological luminaries of the day bought her fossils and went fossil hunting with her. Her knowledge of fossil anatomy was obvious to those “in the know” and she became something of a local celebrity. Lady Harriet Silvester marvelled that “this poor, ignorant girl” could have “arrived to that degree of knowledge as to be in the habit of writing and talking with professors and other clever men on the subject, and they all acknowledge that she understands more of the science than anyone else in this kingdom”.

 The picture we get of Anning’s personality is of someone who knows what they’re talking about and doesn’t mind letting you know. As the Scottish mineralogist Thomas Allen noted: “Mary Anning’s knowledge of the subject is quite surprising – she is perfectly acquainted with the anatomy of her subjects, and her account of her disputes with Buckland, whose anatomical science she holds in great contempt, was quite amusing”.

The Reverend Buckland was an Oxfordian giant of geology and he and Anning often worked closely together, particularly on coprolites. Gideon Mantell, the discoverer of the Iguanadon described Anning (in rather misogynistic terms) as a “geological lioness … in a little dirty shop, with hundreds of specimens piled around her in the greatest disorder. She, the presiding Deity, [proved] a prim, pedantic vinegar looking, thin female; shrewd, and rather satirical in her conversation.”

Anning, then, was a major contributor to the sciences of geology and paleontology, just as they were gathering steam – becoming established in museums and gaining worldwide interest. Historian Hugh Torrens, in his 1995 presidential address about Anning for the British Society for the History of Science, chose the epithet the “greatest fossilist the world has known” for the title of his talk. So why is Anning only now getting a statue? Why did she not have a more prominent place in the history of science? There are a number of explanations.

The most obvious answer is Anning’s gender. In Anning’s time, science was very much a male domain. Even today only 35% of those enrolled in STEM disciplines and only 28% of the world’s researchers are women. Most contemporary descriptions of Anning expressed surprised that a woman could be so knowledgeable, often with the implication that such knowledge in the “fairer sex” is threatening.

Another factor was class. Science wasn’t simply the domain of men, but gentlemen. As the artist and geologist Henry De la Beche wrote in Anning’s death notice, she was “not placed among even the easier classes of society, but who had to earn her daily bread by her labour”. Anning’s research was intimately tied to how she made a living. To the Victorian mind, such reliance was rather distasteful and sullied the pure search for knowledge.

The fact that Anning – despite the fact that she made her living from finding and classifying fossils – was classed as an amateur is a third explanation (she lacked education). Her class and gender denied membership (or even attendance) to the Geological Society. One of the myths about Anning throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was the idea that she was barely literate: a kind of lower-class fossil prodigy who had little real input into the science of paleontology.

Anning was rarely thanked in academic publications – or even credited for her discoveries. Careful work by historians tracking down the many letters between Anning and prominent geologists revealed not only Anning’s knowledge of fossils, but also of the debates around the long-lost worlds those fossils revealed. Considering the prominent role of amateurs as “citizen scientists” in paleontology today, Anning’s example is telling.

Another reason that Anning had little impact during her lifetime and beyond is a bias for grand scientific theories. Scientists who are considered great and heroic – think Charles Darwin or Isaac Newton – all built systematic theories about how the universe worked. Anning, by contrast, collected fossils and prepared them for display (although we now know she influenced the debate as well).

 However, Darwin similarly depended on careful breeding experiments and natural observations, while Newton relied on an enormous network of traders, explorers and astronomers to collect the experimental data underlying his work. Anning was a remarkably skilled, knowledgeable field worker and fossil preparator. The science of field work, fossil preparation and so forth – often invisible – is necessary and important in itself.

Anning died of breast cancer in 1847 after a rough decade. In the late 1830s, fossil hunting became more difficult and her last sale to the British Museum is recorded in 1840. She was not forgotten by the geological community who had so benefited from her discoveries though. They helped grant her a £25 annuity in 1838.

The philosopher Derek Turner has mused about how the history of palaeontology might have been different if Anning was given the recognition and support she deserved: “What theoretical contributions might she have made? And how might our popular images of the fossil hunter have developed differently? Would we think differently about commercial fossil collecting? Would women be better represented and more visible in palaeontology today?”

A statue to Mary Anning doesn’t simply commemorate her remarkable achievements – achievements made despite considerable bias – but what she could have achieved had she lived in a world without that bias.

Mary Anning: how a poor, Victorian woman became one of the world’s greatest palaeontologists. By Adrian Currie. The Conversation ,  November 2, 2018