A wonderful and charming little book; another find that giveusadrink has sent me. A joy to read, by an author clearly captured by the life of Anna Thynne and her work on marine creatures, such as the madrepores. A very short book, and it would be interesting to learn more of Anna, but the records are thin. Other interesting Victorian women emerge; such as self-taught Mary Anning, somewhat embittered at theft of her work. The importance of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in encouraging women is interesting to read of, along with details of Philip Gosse, who felt Thynne's work should be published in extenso and not as part of his own book. I felt a strong desire to add this book to my permanent collection, but I must resist this.

As usual I came home from the meet up with far more books than I had intended.

This book caught my eye because it appears to be an intriguing account. Part of the tale it tell centres on an exhibition in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey - so I may just try to release the book in the cloisters when I'm done with it.

Well, having talked about it for over a year, we have finally sold our house. I thought it would take months in the current climate but 12 days after it went on the market, it sold. So we had to find somewhere to move to pretty damn quick and now all that remains is to dot the is and cross the ts before moving, hopefully in 2 to 3 weeks. So that huge pile of 'to be read' books which has been growing in the corner of the study for the last three years is about to be deciminated so that we have less to pack and less to move. I don't like releasing books before I've read them but needs - in his case hubby's back - must. Expect to see lots of books released in London and its environs in the next few days and weeks. In the meantime, if the book is still marked available, please PM me if you would like it. I'm more than happy to post a few out to keen readers!

Reserved for ETMadrid who has asked to read this book. I hope to hand it over at the meet up at the Camel and Artichoke tonight.

Thank you so much Rivercassini for digging this out for me. I came across this as another book by the same author ("Darwin and the Barnacle") was listed in the list of further reading at the end of the book about Darwin that I just finished. And this one struck particularly as my grandfather was a marine biologist and my grandmother was a researcher of coral reefs before the 2nd World War. Pleased to see it's not a huge tome and hopefully I'll read it soon. Thank you too to johnevelyn for registering it!

I'm very glad that I came across this title and that Rivercassini was able to to give it to me. Marine biology is very much a part of my own recent family history, and I've no doubt that it was this common passion that brought my grandparents together. My grandmother has a photograph of herself bent over digging in the sand looking for sea creatures (rather like the Punch cartoon on page 130, without the crinolins and crowds), and has told me that that is one of the first times my grandfather-to-be saw her - irresistible! And one of the highlights of my early childhood was to spend the day at the marine lab at Plymouth with my grandfather, and have a private tour of the aquarium. But this book has been insightful in the way it puts their own investigations and studies into the context of the earlier Victorian age, and I now understand why we had for a long time boxes full of little fossils, and my other grandmother's dusty boxes of pinned butterflies. Vestiges of a by-gone era. I was interested to read too that Anna Thyne spent some time in Bristol, and of the history of the Clifton Zoo and London Zoo Aquarium (where I took my goddaughter just two weeks ago). My grandmother got her PhD studying (at Bristol in the 30s) a newly-discovered coral reef fish. I wish that she could read this book, but she is now blind and hard of hearing. I'll speak to her on the phone about it before I think about giving it a new home.

This is a great little format - I'm grateful to its previous readers!

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

I gave this to my brother.