Sarah Sophia Banks (28 October 1744 – 27 September 1818) was an English antiquarian collector and sister and collaborator of

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 ...

Joseph Banks Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James ...

. She collected coins and medals and

ephemera Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in ...

which are now historically valuable like

broadsheet A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long Vertical and horizontal, vertical pages, typically of . Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner (format), Berliner and Tabloid (newspaper format), ta ...

s, newspaper clippings,

visiting card A visiting card, also known as a calling card, is a small card used for social purposes. Before the 18th century, visitors making social calls left handwritten notes at the home of friends who were not at home. By the 1760s, the upper classes in ...

s, prints, advertisements and

playbill ''Playbill'' is an American monthly magazine for theatergoers. Although there is a subscription issue available for home delivery, most copies of ''Playbill'' are printed for particular productions and distributed at the door as the show's pr ...

Biography

She was born on 28 October 1744 at 30

Argyll Street Argyll Street is a road located in the Soho district of Central London. It links Great Marlborough Street to the south to Oxford Street in the north and is connected to Regent Street to the west by Little Argyll Street. Historically it was someti ...

Soho Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develop ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

the daughter of William Banks, the Member of Parliament for

Grampound Grampound ( kw, Ponsmeur) is a village in Cornwall, England. It is at an ancient crossing point of the River Fal and today is on the A390 road west of St Austell and east of Truro.Ordnance Survey: Landranger map sheet 204 ''Truro & Falmouth'' ...

, and his wife Sarah. She "discussed questions of plant biology with her brother..." and "...influenced him greatly." Many "of her ideas made their way into his writings nd shealso provided valuable support by recopying and editing the entire manuscript of Banks' Newfoundland voyage (published 1766)."

Legacy

Her varied collections were left to her brother and sister-in-law who presented them to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

and the

Royal Mint Museum The Royal Mint Museum is a numismatics museum located in Llantrisant, Wales, which houses coins, medals, artwork and minting equipment previous owned by the Royal Mint. Although the museum is located on the same site as the Royal Mint, the mint ...

. Her coin collection is now divided between the British Museum and the Royal Mint, while her prints are housed between the British Museum and British Library. The rediscovery of her scrapbook on the London Monster, a man who attacked dozens of women 1788–90, led directly to Jan Bondeson's book on the subject in 2000.

Ancestry

*Catherine Eagleton, "Collecting African money in Georgian London: Sarah Sophia Banks and her collection of coins", ''Museum History Journal'', vol. 6, no. 1, 2013, pp. 23–38. *Catherine Eagleton, "Collecting America: Sarah Sophia Banks and the 'Continental Dollar' of 1776", ''Numismatic Chronicle'', vol. 174, 2014, pp. 293–301. *Arlene Leis, "Displaying Art and Fashion: Ladies' Pocket-Book Imagery in the Paper Collections of Sarah Sophia Banks", ''Konsthistorisk Tidskrift'', vol. 82, no. 3, 2013, pp. 252–71. *Arlene Leis, "Ephemeral Histories: Social Commemoration of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in the paper Collections of Sarah Sophia Banks" in Satish Padiyar, Phillip Shaw and Philippa Simpson (eds.) ''Visual Culture and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars'', Routledge, London and New York, 2017, pp. 183–199. *Arlene Leis, "A Truly Interesting Collection of Visiting Cards and Co' in Toby Burrows and Cynthia Johnston (eds.) Collecting the Past:British Collectors and Their Collections 18th to the 20th Centuries (Routledge, 2019) *Anthony Pincott, "The Book Tickets of Sarah Sophia Banks", ''The Bookplate Journal'', vol. 2, no.1, March 2004, pp. 3–30.

References

External links

British Museum Collection Online
– over 14,000 objects from her collection which are now at the British Museum {{DEFAULTSORT:Banks, Sarah 1744 births 1818 deaths Collectors from London Women collectors Women botanists English numismatists Women numismatists 18th-century women scientists 19th-century British women scientists 18th-century British scientists 19th-century British scientists British women historians People from Soho

Biography

Legacy

Ancestry

Further reading

References

External links