Catherine Cooper Hopley

Catherine Cooper Hopley (5 October 1817 – 1911), also known by the pen-name Sarah L. Jones,[1][2] was a British author, governess, artist, and naturalist known for her books on the American Civil War and her nature books for general audiences, including the first popular book on snakes in the English language.[3][4][5]

Catherine Cooper Hopley
Hopley c. 1893
Born(1817-10-05)5 October 1817
Whitstable, Kent, England
Died1911 (aged 93)
OccupationAuthor, naturalist
SubjectNon-fiction
Relatives

Early life and family

Hopley was born in Whitstable, Kent, the only daughter among four children to parents Edward Hopley (1780–1841), a surgeon, and Catherine Cooper Prat (1792–1878). Her oldest brother Edward Hopley (1816–1869) became a noted painter and entomologist, while her second brother, John Hopley (1821–1904) emigrated to America and became a noted publisher and political figure in Ohio.[3][6][7] Her youngest brother Thomas Hopley (1819–1876) was a schoolteacher convicted in the beating death of a student in the Eastbourne manslaughter trial.[8][9] Little of Hopley's early family life is known.[3]

Travels in America

Hopley came to the United States in the mid-1850s to visit family in Ohio and Indiana. She was active in the Cleveland area from 1855 to 1859, displaying crayon drawings and watercolours in the Ohio State Fair and giving instruction in drawing, painting, music and French.[10][11] In 1860 she traveled to Virginia, where she was present at the outbreak of the American Civil War. During her travels, she encountered several Confederate leaders including President Jefferson Davis, Stephen Mallory,[12] Robert E. Lee[2] and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. She corresponded with the London press, and her habits of frequent sketching made some Virginians suspect her of being a spy for the North. Unable to cross the Union blockade to return north, she traveled further south, and was a tutor to the children of Florida governor John Milton. She left Florida in 1863, and soon returned to England. She returned briefly to the United States in 1883, as a guest of Lucretia Garfield, the widow of President James A. Garfield.[10]

In England, she began publishing on her travels in America. In her two volume Life in the South (1863), she describes her observations of the social culture in Virginia between 1860 and 1862 writing anonymously as "A Blockaded British Subject", "Miss Jones, and under the initials "S.L.J.".[1] Her tone has been described as both neutral and sympathetic to the Confederacy and slave-owning society: she opposed slavery, but claimed it was not as bad as had been portrayed, and noted instances of Northern opposition to emancipation.[2] Her biography of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson was published in August 1863, one of the first biographies published after Jackson's death.[13][14] It was generally not well received.[12]:127 Hopley's third book, Rambles and Adventures in the Wilds of the West (1872), contained information on American birds, plants, and insects.[5]

Natural history

Back in England, Hopley became increasingly interested in reptiles and amphibians. She worked in the Gardens of the London Zoological Society (the precursor to today's London Zoo), and published short notes on snakes, fish, and insects in journals. Her 1882 book Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life was the first popular book on snakes in English.[3] The British Quarterly Review described Snakes as "the most thorough, the most complete, and the most popularly readable that has been published in English on the subject."[15] Snakes includes detailed observation of feeding behaviour in snakes, including the mechanism by which Xenodon snakes erect their teeth in a viper-like fashion, an observation that predates those by E. G. Boulenger (generally credited with the description) by over 30 years.[3]

Hopley never married, and she died in England[lower-alpha 1] in 1911, aged 93. The date of her death has been stated as 9 April,[3] while some contemporary obituaries have a byline of 1 May.[17] Contemporary obituaries state she was suspected of being a British spy while in America and imprisoned for several months.[17][18][19][20]

Books

Notes
  1. Some modern sources state she lived in Tickenham, Somerset, e.g.[5][3] However, some contemporary sources list her residence as Twickenham, a London suburb.[16]

References
  1. Jennings, John Melville (1949). "Catherine Cooper Hopley: A Blockaded British Subject". The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 57 (1): 77–78. JSTOR 4245605.
  2. Campbell, Duncan A. (2003). English Public Opinion and the American Civil War. Boydell & Brewer. pp. 119–. ISBN 978-0-86193-263-4.
  3. Adler, Kraig (2007). "Hopley, Catherine C. (1817–1911)". Contributions to the History of Herpetology. 2. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles. pp. 110–111. ISBN 978-0916984717.
  4. Johnson, Betty J.; Smith, Hobart M. (1985). "Sundowner, the forgotten ophidiophile". Bulletin of the Maryland Herpetological Society. 21 (3): 119–134.
  5. Creese, Mary R. S. (2000). Ladies in the Laboratory? American and British Women in Science, 1800–1900. Scarecrow Press. p. 107. ISBN 978-0-585-27684-7.
  6. Van Vugt, William E. (2006). British Buckeyes: The English, Scots, and Welsh in Ohio, 1700–1900. Kent State University Press. pp. 214–. ISBN 978-0-87338-843-6.
  7. Hopley, John Edward (1912). History of Crawford County, Ohio, and Representative Citizens. Richmond-Arnold Publishing. pp. 627–630.
  8. Cust, Lionel Henry; Pottle, Mark (2004). "Hopley, Edward William John (1816–1869), subject painter". In Pottle, Mark (ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/13761. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  9. Moore, Julian (January 2008). "Hopley, Thomas". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/93658. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  10. Haverstock, Mary Sayre; Vance, Jeannette Mahoney; Meggitt, Brian L., eds. (2000). Artists in Ohio, 1787–1900: A Biographical Dictionary. Kent State University Press. pp. 425–426. ISBN 978-0-87338-616-6.
  11. "State Fair: Awards of Premiums". Cleveland Morning Leader. 21 September 1858. p. 2.
  12. Bennett, John D. (2008). The London Confederates: The Officials, Clergy, Businessmen and Journalists who Backed the American South During the Civil War. McFarland. pp. 125–. ISBN 978-0-7864-3056-7.
  13. Foreman, Amanda (28 June 2011). A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War. Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-679-60397-9.
  14. Noyalas, Jonathan A. (2010). Stonewall Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign: War Comes to the Homefront. Arcadia Publishing. p. 93. ISBN 978-1-61423-040-3.
  15. "Review: Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life. By Catherine C. Hopley". The British Quarterly Review. 77: 476–477. 1883.
  16. The Entomologist. 28. Simpkin, Marshall & Company. 1895. pp. 53 & 160.
  17. "Catherine Cooper Hopley". New-York Tribune. 2 May 1911. p. 7.
  18. "Catherine Cooper Hopley". The Fairmont West Virginian. 6 May 1911. p. 4.
  19. "[no title]". The Nation. 92 (2392): 453. 4 May 1911. Cite uses generic title (help)
  20. "Notes For Women". Auckland Star. 13 July 1911. p. 8.

Further reading
  • Eaton, Clement (1979). "Charles Darwin and Catherine Hopley: Victorian Views of Plantation Societies". Plantation Society in the Americas. 1 (1): 16–27. OCLC 5016437.
  • Mullen, Richard (1994). Birds of Passage: Five Englishwomen in Search of America. London: Duckworth. ISBN 0715624296.
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