Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft (29 October 1791 – 16 May 1828) was a North American

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

, naturalist,

botanical illustrator Botanical illustration is the art of depicting the form, color, and details of plant species, frequently in watercolor paintings. They must be scientifically accurate but often also have an artistic component and may be printed with a botanical ...

, and

women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...

advocate, active in colonial Cuba in the early nineteenth century.

Family

Anne Kingsbury was born 29 October 1791, in

Rindge, New Hampshire Rindge is a town in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 6,476 at the 2020 census, up from 6,014 at the 2010 census. Rindge is home to Franklin Pierce University, the Cathedral of the Pines and part of Annett State ...

. Her parents were Benjamin Kingsbury and Abigail Sawin (1748–1793). She married Charles Wollstonecraft, whose sister

Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft (, ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationsh ...

achieved fame in Britain as a philosopher, author, and advocate for the rights of women. One of her nephews by marriage was

Edward Wollstonecraft Edward Wollstonecraft (, ; 1783 7 December 1832) was a successful businessman in early colonial Australia, settling in what is now Sydney. He was the nephew of the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and cousin to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the ...

, a successful businessman in

early colonial Australia Early may refer to: History * The beginning or oldest part of a defined historical period, as opposed to middle or late periods, e.g.: ** Early Christianity ** Early modern Europe Places in the United States * Early, Iowa * Early, Texas * Early ...

Career

Following the death of her husband in 1817, Anne Wollstonecraft moved to

Matanzas, Cuba Matanzas (Cuban ) is the capital of the Cuban province of Matanzas. Known for its poets, culture, and Afro-Cuban folklore, it is located on the northern shore of the island of Cuba, on the Bay of Matanzas (Spanish ''Bahia de Matanzas''), east ...

. While there, she studied the flora of the island, and in the mid-1820s, created an extensive illustrated manuscript, ''Specimens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba'', an important resource for the study of natural history in colonial Cuba. She was able to publish several of her botanical discoveries during her life, many under the pseudonym D’Anville. One letter was published in the ''

Boston Monthly Magazine The ''Boston Monthly Magazine'' (1825–1826) of Boston, Massachusetts, was edited by Samuel Lorenzo Knapp in the 1820s. It was "devoted to literature, philosophy, and miscellaneous matters, worthy of being recorded, ... ndchiefly directed to ...

''. However, although she sent the almost completed manuscript to a publisher months before her death, ''Specimens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba'' was never published. As well as drawings and descriptions of plants, the manuscript also included records of their indigenous uses. While Wollstonecraft devoted most of her writing to botany and ecology, she also wrote in support of

, including ''The Natural Rights of Women'', also published in the ''Boston Monthly Magazine''. Wollstonecraft died May 16, 1828.

Legacy

Wollstonecraft's three-volume manuscript, ''Specimens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba'', was thought by scholars to be a

lost work A lost work is a document, literary work, or piece of multimedia produced some time in the past, of which no surviving copies are known to exist. It can only be known through reference. This term most commonly applies to works from the classical ...

. There were references to it, but no-one had seen it. It had been donated to

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1923 by a faculty member who was descended from her family, but because early references to the work misidentified the author's name, its significance was not recognized. It was located and its significance appreciated in March 2018 through the process of digitization. It has now been made available to view or download online via the

HathiTrust Digital Library HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...

, courtesy of the Cornell University Library.

External links

Specimens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba
(3 volume manuscript, available to download from the Hathi Trust, courtesy of the Cornell University Library) *
Article published in ''National Geographic'' about rediscovery of Wollstonecraft album 22 April 2019

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wollstonecraft, Nancy Anne Kingsbury American women botanists American botanical illustrators 19th-century American botanists People from Cheshire County, New Hampshire American expatriates People from Matanzas 1791 births 1828 deaths American women's rights activists 19th-century American women People from Spanish Cuba

Family

Career

Legacy

See also

External links

References