Eleanor Constance Bor ''née'' Rundall (1898 – 1957) was a British writer who is remembered for her book ''The Adventures of a Botanist's Wife'', which describes her travels in remote parts of north-eastern India and elsewhere.

Biography

She was born in Moffat, Scotland to Constance and John William Rundall, clergyman and headmaster of St Ninian's School.Year Book of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1973
/ref> Her parents’ roots were in England, and she went to a small boarding school near London with one of her sisters. In her early thirties she lived in

Assam Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...

for two years before marrying her husband, the botanist

Norman Bor Norman Loftus Bor Order of the Indian Empire, CIE OBE FRSE Fellow of the Linnean Society, FLS Indian National Science Academy, FNI (2 May 1893 – 22 December 1972) was an Irish botanist. He was awarded the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society i ...

, in

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

in 1931. Their life together started in Assam. As they moved around they undertook many adventurous expeditions, often in remote mountainous areas and including a visit to

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

. They also had one or two longer stays in established settlements. For Eleanor Bor, four years in

Dehradun Dehradun () is the capital and the most populous city of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and is governed by the Dehradun Municipal Corporation, with the Uttarakhand Legislative As ...

were mainly spent writing and drawing as she and her husband did not enjoy the social life of a British

hill station A hill station is a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley. The term was used mostly in colonial Asia (particularly in India), but also in Africa (albeit rarely), for towns founded by European colonialists as refuges ...

. During this time they twice went to

Lahaul The Lahaul and Spiti district in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh consists of the two formerly separate districts of Lahaul () and Spiti (; or ). The present administrative centre is Kyelang in Lahaul. Before the two districts were merged, ...

"journeying deep into the mountains over high passes to the snowline"Sylva Norman, Botanists on Quest, The Times Literary Supplement, 25 July 1952, p487 on ponies, and Bor wrote three books, apparently never published. She sketched in many different locations and carried crayons on her travels. When they went home on leave they travelled through other parts of India, Malaya, Hong Kong and the USA.Norman Loftus Bor (1893-1972), C. E. Hubbard, Kew Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1975), pp. 1-10
/ref> They returned to live in the UK in 1946, and a few years later Bor's book was very well received.Times obituary, 17 April 1957 Reviews praised the energy and vividness of the writing as well as the quality of the author's drawings included in the book.W. B. Turrill, Botanizing as It Should Be, Kew Bulletin, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1952, p294
/ref> Her originality was emphasised by critics, as was her sympathetic interest in the local people in the different places she went to. Norman Bor named a grass he discovered after her: ''Poa eleanorae'' Bor Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Vol 51, p80-82
/ref> She described it as an "emaciated, wizened looking affair, apparently of intense interest to a botanist". At the end of her life she had a "distressing" illness and her husband nursed her until her death in 1957. Her ashes were scattered in the

azalea Azaleas are flowering shrubs in the genus ''Rhododendron'', particularly the former sections ''Tsutsusi'' (evergreen) and '' Pentanthera'' (deciduous). Azaleas bloom in the spring (April and May in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, and Octob ...

garden at

Kew Gardens Kew Gardens is a botanical garden, botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botany, botanical and mycology, mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its li ...

, like her husband's after her.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bor, Eleanor British travel writers 20th-century British women writers 20th-century British writers 1898 births 1957 deaths British women travel writers