<P> Anning did not fully participate in the scientific community of 19th - century Britain, who were mostly Anglican gentlemen . She struggled financially for much of her life . Her family was poor, and her father, a cabinetmaker, died when she was eleven . </P> <P> She became well known in geological circles in Britain, Europe, and America, and was consulted on issues of anatomy as well as about collecting fossils . Nonetheless, as a woman, she was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London and she did not always receive full credit for her scientific contributions . Indeed, she wrote in a letter: "The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone ." The only scientific writing of hers published in her lifetime appeared in the Magazine of Natural History in 1839, an extract from a letter that Anning had written to the magazine's editor questioning one of its claims . </P> <P> After her death in 1847, her unusual life story attracted increasing interest . An uncredited author in All the Year Round, edited by Charles Dickens, wrote of her in 1865 that "(t) he carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and has deserved to win it ." It has often been claimed that her story was the inspiration for the 1908 tongue - twister "She sells seashells on the seashore" by Terry Sullivan . In 2010, one hundred and sixty - three years after her death, the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science . </P> <P> Anning was born in Lyme Regis in Dorset, England . Her father, Richard Anning, was a cabinetmaker who supplemented his income by mining the coastal cliff - side fossil beds near the town, and selling his finds to tourists . He married Mary Moore, known as Molly, on 8 August 1793 in Blandford Forum . The couple moved to Lyme and lived in a house built on the town's bridge . They attended the Dissenter chapel on Coombe Street, whose worshippers initially called themselves independents and later became known as Congregationalists . Shelley Emling writes that the family lived so close to the sea that the same storms that swept along the cliffs to reveal the fossils sometimes flooded the Annings' home, on one occasion forcing them to crawl out of an upstairs bedroom window to avoid being drowned . </P>

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