Sophia Armitt (1847 – 12 June 1908) was a British teacher, writer, and naturalist.

Life

Sophia Armitt was born in

Salford Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...

in 1847, one of three gifted daughters of William and Mary Ann (Whalley) Armitt. All three girls wrote, and they all attended Islington House Academy, but each specialised in a different subject. Armitt took to botany and art, while her middle sister Annie Maria studied English literature and her youngest sister Mary Louisa was a polymath who excelled at music and natural history.Eileen Jay, ‘Armitt, Mary Louisa (1851–1911)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 12 Nov 2015
/ref> Armitt's parents encouraged their daughters' education, and Armitt attended

Manchester School of Art Manchester School of Art in Manchester, England, was established in 1838 as the Manchester School of Design. It is the second oldest art school in the United Kingdom after the Royal College of Art which was founded the year before. It is now par ...

.Armitt sisters
Armitt Museum and Library, Retrieved 12 November 2015 Armitt and Annie went to Paris in 1866 to study French, but the following year their father died without warning and they returned to Great Britain. They then established a school at Eccles in Lancashire and Armitt became the school's head teacher."Sophia Armitt"
Herbaria@home, Retrieved 11 November 2015 The three women spent their spare time attending recitals, art exhibitions, and lectures. They also wrote and sketched and discussed natural history at meetings. Armitt and Mary both discussed their ambitions with

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and politi ...

, who told Mary to just do womanly things but encouraged Armitt to study art. In 1882, Armitt and Mary received a legacy and retired together to

Hawkshead Hawkshead is a village and civil parish in Cumbria, England, which attracts tourists to the South Lakeland area. The parish includes the hamlets of Hawkshead Hill, to the north west, and Outgate, a similar distance north. Hawkshead contains one ...

; later, after being widowed, Annie joined them. They continued their cultural interests, talking to artists, writers, and educationalists like

Charlotte Mason Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason (1 January 1842 – 16 January 1923) was a British educator and reformer in England at the turn of the twentieth century. She proposed to base the education of children upon a wide and liberal curriculum. She was ins ...

and

Frances Arnold Frances Hamilton Arnold (born July 25, 1956) is an American chemical engineer and Nobel Laureate. She is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In ...

. Mason, who ran a school for governesses, published the ''Parents Review'', for which Armitt wrote articles."Parents' Review"
AmblesideOnline Parents' Review Article Archive, Retrieved 11 November 2015 Armitt died in 1908.

Works in ''The Parents Review''

*"Irritability in Plants" (vol. 7, 1896, pp. 521–526) *"Winter Buds" (vol. 8, no. 3, 1897, pp. 162–169) *"Water Plants" (vol. 8, 1897, pp. 375–381) *"Characteristic Forms of the Lake District Flora" (vol. 9. 1898, p. 780) *"Seedless Reproduction of Seed Plants" (vol. 10, 1899, p. 98) *"Nature Notes for April" (vol. 10, 1899, p. 251; with Mary Armitt) *"Garden Gossip 2" (vol. 12, 1901, pp. 146–148) *"Garden Gossip 3" (vol. 12, 1901, pp. 222–225) *"Garden Gossip 4" (vol. 12, 1901, pp. 296–297) *"Garden Gossip 5" (vol. 12, 1901, pp. 382–386) *"Garden Gossip 6" (vol. 12, no. 9, 1901, pp. 459–462) *"Garden Gossip 7" (vol. 12, 1901, pp. 715–717) *"Garden Gossip 8" (vol. 12, no.9, 1901, pp. 814–816) *"Garden Gossip 9" (vol. 12, no. 9, 1901, pp. 884–886) *"Garden Gossip 10" (vol. 12, no. 9, 1901, pp. 965–967)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Armitt, Sophia 1847 births 1908 deaths People from Salford British naturalists 19th-century British women writers People from Hawkshead