Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science

by Catherine McNeur

Overview

The untold story of two sisters whose discoveries sped the growth of American science in the nineteenth century, combining "meticulous research and sensitive storytelling" (Janice P. Nimura, New York Times-bestselling author of The Doctors Blackwell)

In Mischievous Creatures, historian Catherine McNeur uncovers the lives and work of Margaretta Hare Morris and Elizabeth Carrington Morris, sisters and scientists in early America. Margaretta, an entomologist, was famous among her peers and the public for her research on seventeen-year cicadas and other troublesome insects. Elizabeth, a botanist, was a prolific illustrator and a trusted supplier of specimens to the country’s leading experts. Together, their discoveries helped fuel the growth and professionalization of science in antebellum America. But these very developments confined women in science to underpaid and underappreciated roles for generations to follow, erasing the Morris sisters’ contributions along the way.

Mischievous Creatures is an indelible portrait of two unsung pioneers, one that places women firmly at the center of the birth of American science.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541674189
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/31/2023
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	476,729
File size:	20 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Catherine McNeur is an associate professor of history at Portland State University in Oregon and the author of Taming Manhattan. She is the recipient of several awards, including the American Society for Environmental History’s George Perkins Marsh Prize. She lives in Portland, Oregon.   

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/28/2023

Historian McNeur (Taming Manhattan) paints a vibrant portrait of botanist Elizabeth Carrington Morris and her younger sister, entomologist Margaretta Hare Morris, restoring the women to their rightful place in the history of science. Born in the 1790s to a well-to-do family, the sisters grew up in Philadelphia, where they conducted scientific observations and wrote up the findings from their family home. Margaretta made a name for herself by publishing her research into how the Hessian fly destroyed wheat crops, then went on to study, among other subjects, the cicada’s 17-year cycle and the possible role of beetles in causing potato blight. Elizabeth named and categorized plants, drew illustrations of local flora for plant journals, and assisted Harvard botanist Asa Gray. The sisters regularly contributed to popular scientific publications, and Margaretta gained membership to several scientific associations. Yet the Morris sisters and other women scientists of the era were increasingly marginalized by men in the field who viewed them as subordinate helpers and cast doubt on their findings—as Charles Darwin did with Margaretta’s water beetle study. Age and ill-health slowed the sisters’ output; Elizabeth died in 1865 and Margaretta in 1867. With deep insight into the gendered power dynamics that shaped the first half of the 19th century, McNeur serves up an incisive study of institutional bias. It’s a vital account. Illus. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

An affecting, admirably nuanced portrait of two lives fully dedicated to the pursuit of science.”—Wall Street Journal

“A fascinating portrait of 19th-century science in the United States from a little-considered perspective.”—Science

“With deep insight into the gendered power dynamics that shaped the first half of the 19th century, McNeur serves up an incisive study of institutional bias. It’s a vital account.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“An important contribution to the history of women in science.”—History: Reviews of New Books

“With detailed research and excellent writing, McNeur has thoughtfully provided a place in history for the sisters that had previously been denied them.”—Booklist

“A welcome addition to intellectual history that restores two gifted women to the scholarly record.”—Kirkus

“Catherine McNeur’s meticulous research and sensitive storytelling are exactly what the Morris sisters deserve. She brings their painstaking and painfully underestimated work on ferns and flies, seaweeds, and cicadas to life—and also offers an illuminating case study of the omissions, misattributions, and erasures that have kept female scientists like them hidden for centuries.”—Janice P. Nimura, New York Times–bestselling author of The Doctors Blackwell

“By excavating the long-forgotten story of the remarkable Morris sisters, McNeur opens a valuable window onto the history of how scientific knowledge is created—and by whom. One will never think of dandelions, cicadas, or science itself the same way after reading this important and beautifully written book.”—Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn

“Mischievous Creatures recaptures the fascinating world of two sister scientists in brilliant detail. The Morris’s lab was their garden, where their unsung work changed the science of their time.”—Kate Brown, author of Manual for Survival

“In McNeur’s expert narration, a co-biography of sister naturalists in nineteenth-century Philadelphia becomes an excavation of power structures underlying science and history. A triumph of investigative research and artful writing.”—Jared Farmer, author of Elderflora

“McNeur is a brilliant historian and a gifted writer. Mischievous Creatures is intensely beautiful, deeply humane, and filled with astonishing insights. It will change the way you think about science, the gendered production and reproduction of knowledge, and the workings of the world around you.”—Ari Kelman, author of A Misplaced Massacre

“What did it mean for a woman to pursue a life in science in the decades before the Civil War? In this elegant and insightful book, McNeur recovers the lives and scientific labors of entomologist Margaretta Hare Morris and botanist Elizabeth Carrington Morris—the wheat flies, cicadas, beetles, ferns, and forget-me-nots that fascinated them; the curiosity that drove them; and the family, friends, and colleagues who sustained them. With stunning work in the archives, McNeur moves the Morris sisters from the margins to the center of the story and changes the way we think about the history of antebellum American science.”—Ann Fabian, author of The Skull Collectors

From the Publisher

2023-08-07
Lively biography of two sisters who made substantial contributions to 19th-century natural history.

Elizabeth and Margaretta Morris were sisters who, writes McNeur, “lived together, hiked together, and debated new scientific theories together.” They were hardly alone in their vocations and avocations. As the author notes, the term scientist came about in 1834 to describe “a woman with a talent for turning complex scientific phenomena into understandable prose for popular audiences.” Some men whom we would now call scientists believed that women were better equipped mentally to ponder the minutiae of classification than men, whose supposed task was to come up with big ideas. Well to do but constrained by their time, Elizabeth and Margaretta turned to botany and entomology. Margaretta, in particular, became well known for her work describing the 17-year cycle of the cicada—and as for big ideas, she corresponded with none other than Charles Darwin, then “an up-and-coming naturalist in England,” on the subject of water beetles. McNeur notes that the sisters may have approved of Darwin’s ideas about speciation and natural selection, even if they also collaborated with the anti-evolutionist Louis Agassiz. The sisters were acknowledged as skilled researchers and observers in their time, although when Margaretta, arguably the more accomplished of the two, passed away, “the Academy of Natural Sciences announced her death…but included no details about her life or accomplishments.” As a result, they were never properly acknowledged nor memorialized, an erasure that may not have been intended, strictly speaking, but that “gradually accumulated until the sisters’ stories faded from view.” Fortunately, in a well-written book that digs deep into the literature, McNeur recovers those stories and places them in the context of a science that, for all its strides forward, took no trouble to include women in the conversation.

A welcome addition to intellectual history that restores two gifted women to the scholarly record.

Kirkus Reviews