Who was Eleanor Glanville?

  • Photograph of a collection of butterflies. multicoloured

Lady Eleanor Glanville (1654-1709) was the first lady of British Natural History – a 17th / early 18th 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

The Glanville Fritillary


In pursuit of Butterflies


Eleanor Glanville and the Culture of Collecting Insects

By Michele Pflug, a doctoral candidate in the Department of History, University of Oregon in the U.S

More pages in this section