Maria Catlow
(active ca. 1840-1874)
and
Agnes Catlow
(1806-1889)

Maria Catlow (active ca. 1840–1874) and Agnes Catlow (1806–1889)
Sketches of Natural History Subjects, c. 1840.


This album of natural scientific illustrations opened Maria and Agnes Catlow’s twenty-five year career as co-authors. The sisters’ sketches of plants, landscapes, insects, birds, and women made their STEM textbooks for “popular” (female) audiences and children’s stories into bestsellers. Although their final work, The Children’s Garden and What They Made of It (1865), sold twelve editions, Agnes was called “Science Gossip” by 1889, in her Athenaeum obituary: “successful in the work of popularizing science” but “hardly familiar.”


MS Eng 1865. Gift of Florence Fearrington, 2018.