Who was Eleanor Glanville?

  • the Glanville fritillary

Lady Eleanor Glanville (1654-1709) was the first lady of British Natural History – a 17th Century entomologist. Married to a Lincolnshire landowner, she discovered the Lincolnshire Fritillary in the Lincolnshire Wolds – later renamed the Glanville Fritillary ─ one of only two native British butterflies named after British entomologists.

Photo credit: Oxford University Museum of Natural History

The Glanville Fritillary

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"The years of Lady Eleanor Glanville's life encompasses a time of great change, instability and conflict in England. When Eleanor was born the country had been torn apart by a bloody civil war, Cromwell ruled the land as Lord Protector and Christmas was forbidden...

Science & Superstition
The intellectual changes which occurred during the second half of the Seventeenth Century have become known as the Scientific Revolution. The Royal Society was founded in 1662 and 'natural philosophers' gathered to discuss astronomy, physics, alchemy and mathematics. Country mansions were filled with 'curios' and there was a great desire to collect, categorise and catalogue and bring order out of the chaos of the natural world... and a woman who dared to forsake domesticity in favour of learning and science and what were considered 'masculine' pursuits', was especially prey to ridicule and superstition...."

Fiona Mountain