Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science

(Hardback)

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The untold story of two sisters whose discoveries sped the growth of American science in the nineteenth century

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.

Reviews

"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
"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
"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

"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

Author Bio

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.