Eleanor Glanville


Lady Eleanor Glanville was a 17th-century English entomologist from Tickenham in Somerset.

Entomologist

Lady Glanville was particularly interested in butterflies. She collected large numbers of butterfly specimens, many of which survive as some of the earliest specimens kept in the Natural History Museum. She would beat the hedges for "a parcel of wormes", neighbours reported.
The Glanville fritillary butterfly is named after her.

Personal life

Lady Glanville married to a Lincolnshire landowner. She later discovered the Lincolnshire Fritillary in the Lincolnshire Wolds – which was renamed the Glanville Fritillary ─ one of only two native British butterflies named after British entomologists.
Lady Eleanor Glanville died on the 1st of January 1709 aged 55 years old which was 311 years ago to date as her anniversary of her death.

Biography

Eleanor Glanville was the daughter of William Goodricke and Eleanor Davis Poyntz, daughter of Rice Davis and Mary Pitt. Eleanor Davis was the widow of Nicholas Poyntz, a descendant of the Poyntz family, anciently feudal barons of Curry Mallet in Somerset, later of Iron Acton in Gloucestershire. Eleanor Goodrick married Edmund Ashfield and after his death Richard Glanville. She pursued her interest in entomology after separating from her second husband, and tried to leave her money away from her immediate family. However, on her death, her children overturned her will, arguing that she was insane because of her hobby.

In culture

In 2009, Fiona Mountain published a novel about Glanville's life.