Lady Anne Monson (née Vane; 25 June 172618 February 1776), also known as Lady Anne Hope-Vere, was an English botanist and collector of plants and insects.

Life

She was the daughter of

Henry Vane, 1st Earl of Darlington Henry Vane, 1st Earl of Darlington, PC (c. 1705 – 6 March 1758), known as Lord Barnard between 1753 and 1754, was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1726 to 1753 when he succeeded to a peerage as Baron Barnard. Lif ...

, and his wife, Lady Grace Fitzroy; she was a great-grandchild of Charles II. Her aunt, also

Anne Vane Anne Vane (17 September 1710 - 27 March 1736), also known as "the Hon. Mrs. Vane," was a maid of honour to Caroline of Ansbach and mistress to her son Frederick, Prince of Wales. Life Vane was the first daughter of Gilbert Vane, second Baron Bar ...

, was a royal mistress.Matthew Kilburn, ‘Vane, Anne (d. 1736)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 200
accessed 19 Feb 2017
/ref> In 1746, she married Charles Hope-Vere of

Craigiehall Craigiehall is a late-17th-century country house, which until 2015 served as the Headquarters of the British Army in Scotland. It is located close to Cramond, around west of central Edinburgh, Scotland. Craigiehall was designed by Sir Willia ...

and had two sons before the marriage was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1757, due to the birth of an illegitimate child. No details of this child's father are known. Later in 1757, she married Colonel George Monson of Lincolnshire. Since her new husband's career was with the Indian military, she spent most of her time 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 ...

, where she became prominent in Anglo-Indian society. She died in Calcutta on 18 February 1776.

Botany

Lady Anne's interest in natural history predated her arrival in India. In 1760, she was already well known to the botanical community as a "remarkable lady botanist". It was claimed by her contemporary J. E. Smith that it was Lady Anne who assisted James Lee in translating

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

Philosophia Botanica ''Philosophia Botanica'' ("Botanical Philosophy", ed. 1, Stockholm & Amsterdam, 1751.) was published by the Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) who greatly influenced the development of botanical taxonomy and systematics ...

, the first work to explain the Linnaean classification to English readers. Lee published the book under his own name in 1760, and acknowledged Lady Anne anonymously in the preface. A few years later Lady Anne was introduced to the Danish entomologist

Johan Christian Fabricius Johan Christian Fabricius (7 January 1745 – 3 March 1808) was a Danish zoologist, specialising in "Insecta", which at that time included all arthropods: insects, arachnids, crustaceans and others. He was a student of Carl Linnaeus, and is cons ...

, one of Linnaeus's pupils. Later, Lady Anne is mentioned by James Lee in her letters to Linnaeus. In 1774, on the way out to Calcutta, Lady Anne visited the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is t ...

where she met another of Linnaeus's pupils,

Carl Peter Thunberg Carl Peter Thunberg, also known as Karl Peter von Thunberg, Carl Pehr Thunberg, or Carl Per Thunberg (11 November 1743 – 8 August 1828), was a Swedish naturalist and an "apostle" of Carl Linnaeus. After studying under Linnaeus at Uppsala Un ...

, a seasoned collector of South African plants. Thunberg accompanied her on several expeditions around

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

, and she presented him with a ring in remembrance. Specimens of Monsonia, a flowering shrub, were sent to Kew Gardens in 1774.

Legacy

One of the South African plants collected by Lady Anne was named

Monsonia ''Monsonia'' is a genus of plants in the family Geraniaceae. It is named after Lady Anne Monson, 1714–76, known for her botanical knowledge and plant collecting in the Cape. Description ''Monsonia'' consists of herbs or undershrubs often with ...

by Linnaeus.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Monson, Anne 1726 births 1776 deaths British women scientists People from Darlington

Anne Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie. Anne is sometimes used as a male name in the ...

Daughters of British earls 18th-century women scientists 18th-century British botanists Scientists from Kolkata Women botanists Burials in India