Sarah Mary Fitton

Common red poppy, Papaver rhoeas, Conversations on Botany, 1817, engr. Thomas Milton Sarah Fitton (c. 1796 – 30 March 1874) was an Irish writer and botanist. Assisted by her sister Elizabeth, Sarah Fitton wrote Conversations on Botany (1817), framed as a series of conversations between a mother and her son on botany and the principles of Linnaean taxonomy. The book focuses on the identification and use of plants in a domestic setting, and influenced the popularity of botany as a field of scientific study for women. Color engravings differ between editions of the book.

Life Sarah Mary (or Margaret) Fitton was born in Dublin to Nicholas Fitton, a Dublin attorney, and his wife Jane Greene. For much of their lives, Sarah, her sisters and her mother were satellites of their brother William, following him to Edinburgh, Northampton, and London. William was trained as a physician and was by avocation a geologist. He was active in scientific circles both professionally and socially, including among his circle of friends such notables as botanist Robert Brown, of the Linnean Society of London. In 1817, Sarah and Elizabeth Fitton published Conversations on Botany. In 1820, William married heiress Maria James, enabling him to give up medical practice, follow his interests as a gentlemen scientist and travel extensively. In addition to her popularization of botany, Fitton wrote other instructional books and short stories for children. Her Conversations on Harmony (1855), a work on music, was dedicated to Cipriani Potter of the Royal Academy of Music in London. It was published in both English and French.

Sarah Fitton died in Paris on 30 March 1874 at 15 rue Ville l'Evêque.

Writing and botanical work Fitton is known for co-authoring Conversations on Botany with her sister Elizabeth, first published in 1817. The principles of arrangement also reflect the ideas of William Withering, in A botanical arrangement of British plants. Conversations on Botany is credited, along with other contemporaneous works, with furthering the popularity of botany with women.

The earliest editions of Conversations on Botany were published anonymously, though later editions show that the majority of the text was written by Sarah Fitton, assisted by Elizabeth. Co-authorship is often erroneously attributed to Maria Elizabetha Jacson or Jane Marcet. By the 1840 edition, however, the plates were marked "Sowerby sc", indicating the work of one of the Sowerby family.

Sarah Fitton's book The Four Seasons: A short account of the structure of plants (1865) draws on the content of Conversations, but was written for a very different audience, members of the Working Men's Institute in Paris. Then in 1913, botanist Gustav Lindau published Afrofittonia which is a genus of plants from Africa in the family Acanthaceae. It was named in the Fitton sisters honour and also the continent where it was found.

Publications

. For 1817 plates by Thomas Milton, see Digital Collections at Science History Institute (High-resolution scans of title page and 20 hand-colored plates from the 1817 printing).

Little By Little, A Series Of Graduated Lessons In The Art Of Reading Music (1863) Four Seasons: a Short Account of the Structure of Plants (1865)