Mrs. R. Lee

Sarah Lee (1791–1856), who published first as Mrs. T. E. Bowdich and later as Mrs. R. Lee, was an English naturalist, illustrator and writer. Born Sarah Wallis in Colchester, she married the explorer Thomas Edward Bowdich and traveled with him to West Africa, where he died in 1824. In Paris she worked in the circle of Georges Cuvier, whose memoir she later wrote, and she illustrated a book on the freshwater fishes of Great Britain. After her second marriage, to Robert Lee, she wrote natural history and travel books for young readers, among them Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals and The African Wanderers.