Theodora C. Stanwell-Fletcher

Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher (born Theodora Morris Cope, January 4, 1906, died Theodora Gray, January 15, 2000 ) was an American naturalist and writer. She is best known for her book Driftwood Valley which won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished writing in natural history in 1948. She was recognized as a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania and elected to the Society of Woman Geographers.

Early life and education Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, to Francis R. Cope, Jr. and Evelyn Flower Morris, she lived much of her youth near rural Dimock, Pennsylvania, at the family home named Woodbourne. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1929 with a BA in Economic Geography and English Literature. After she completed her bachelor's degrees, she and her father traveled around the world for a year visiting the South Pacific, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and the Dutch East Indies. There they built a cabin and began collecting specimens and making wildlife observations. Surviving winter that at times reached -60 degrees Fahrenheit with snow over ten feet deep and summer mosquito swarms, part of the adventure was in figuring out how to live, travel, and collect specimens in the harsh conditions. They interacted with natives who traveled through their area between settlements, the nearest of which was sixty miles away. From Tetana, they ventured into the surrounding area to collect firewood, hunt game for food, and to collect wildlife specimens.

They left British Columbia and returned to Pennsylvania in January 1939. In the two years they were in Pennsylvania, Teddy gave birth to her only child, and the Stanwell-Fletchers wrote about their experience thus far in a three-part article which detailed their wildlife observations, personal interactions, and daily life. She returned to Driftwood Valley in February 1941, where her husband had already arrived to prepare the cabin. This trip, which lasted until September 1941, ended in part because of the increased likelihood of entrance into World War II. is written as a journal documenting her and her husband's, referred to as simply "J.", life at Tetana Lake, wildlife observations, and musings on the people, animals, wilderness, and their relationships with them. More than just detailing expeditions and species identification, the book shows the author's love of remote areas and the life it contains. As a trained naturalist, she made close observations of animals and their behaviors. The book shows her love of adventure and the demanding physical effort needed to live in remote wilderness The book won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished writing in natural history in 1948.

After the success of her first book, she wrote The Tundra World (1952) which was a fictionalized version of her time in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada on the western shore of Hudson Bay. Based primarily on her collegiate work, it was also influenced by a second trip she took in the 1940s to gather more material. In the text, Rosamund Reeves serves as both the narrator and the fictionalized Teddy. The character Eric Grey is based on John Stanwell-Fletcher. In this book, like The Tundra World, the author fictionalized the names of many of the people.