On Episode 27, we meet a Dead Lady Lepidopterist! Dead Ladies Show co-founder Florian Duijsens introduces us to Margaret Fountaine, an English explorer and naturalist who collected butterflies and loved love. Her exciting scientific life and world travels were well-known, but her romantic adventures were only revealed when Margaret’s copious diaries were read in 1978, 100 years after she first started them at age 15.
Florian’s talk was recorded live at ACUD (shoutout to sound engineer Hyui Ines Rmi) just two months ago in Berlin. For the podcast, our other Dead Ladies Show co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins podcast producer & presenter Susan Stone to revel in Margaret’s lovely and at times heart-breaking tale.
Also available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download a transcript here.
Show notes:
These are the diaries that emerged in 1978.
And here’s some portraits of Margaret herself from the diaries.
Septimus Hewson, the cowlicked singer from Limerick
The kind of bike the Fountaine sisters rode 600km through Europe
Khalil as he appears in the diary
Some of Margaret’s beautiful art
The euploea phaenareta margaretae, named after Margaret
The ceratinia ninonia neimyi, which she named after Khalil
Margaret late in life
Margaret’s guerillaed blue plaque
Our theme music is “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon.
Thanks for listening! We’ll be back with a new episode in January. And here’s a link to our Patreon page, in case you’d like to help fund transcripts.
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