Sarah Eglonton Bowdich Lee (née Wallis; 10 September 1791 – 22 September 1856) was an English writer, illustrator, traveller, zoologist, botanist, and pteridologist.
In 1813, she married the naturalist Thomas Edward Bowdich,[2] whose interests in nature, travel, and adventure she shared.
In 1823, on their final trip to Africa, they visited Madeira on their way, but her husband died on the Gambia River on 10 January 1824.
[3] Early in her widowhood, Mrs Bowdich often visited Baron Cuvier in Paris, where he treated her almost like a daughter; upon his death in 1832, she wrote a memoir of his life.
[4][5] Of her numerous works, perhaps the four most important are Taxidermy (1820) an exhaustive treatment which came to a sixth edition in 1843; Excursions in Madeira and Porto Santo (1825), a work of natural history; The Fresh-Water Fishes of Great Britain (1825), illustrated by the author;[6] and Memoirs of Baron Cuvier (1833).