Anne & Susanna Lister
Anne & Susanna Lister
Susanna & Anne Lister
1670–1738 & ca. 1671–1704
Susanna and Anne Lister were British naturalists, scientific illustrators, and engravers. The sisters were still teenagers when they started work on their father’s book, Historiae Conchyliorum (History of Shells).
". . . the delineations of all these, for the most part so accurate, came from the fair hands of this celebrated naturalist's daughters, Susannah and Ann Lister, whose names deserve to descend to posterity with their father's, and whose truly meritorious industry and ingenuity are patterns for their sex."
Detail of the title page of the 1685 edition of Historiae Conchyliorum, showing the names of Susanna and Anne (as Anna) Lister. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Anne (also known as Anna or “Nancy”) and Susanna (“Susan”) were the daughters of Martin Lister (1639–1712), a British naturalist and physician. The sisters created over 1,000 copper engravings of specimens for his project, Historiae Conchyliorum. Their father trained them in the art of accurate scientific illustration and engraving. When Historiae Conchyliorum was published, Martin Lister acknowledged his daughters on the title page.
Historiae Conchyliorum had a major impact on the study of natural history. The detail and accuracy of Anne and Susanna’s drawings set a gold standard for scientific publications in the 1600s. No scientific text had ever presented a comparable collection of clams and snails. Anne and Susanna also contributed to the Royal Society’s publication Philosophical Transactions. In addition to drawing shells, Anne (and possibly Susanna) dissected mollusks and made anatomical drawings. They used microscopes to make observations for some of their work.
Very little of Anne and Susanna’s work or personal lives was recorded after Historiae Conchyliorum. No portraits or drawings of them exist. (One of the portraits on this page is based on a portrait of their grandmother, Susanna Temple, Lady Lister, who was Martin Lister’s mother.) Susanna’s true birth year is unknown (1670 is her baptismal year), and Anna’s date of death is uncertain—it could be as early as 1695 or as late as 1704. Their famous father is still known as a founder of conchology, the study of mollusk shells.
Engraving of a chambered nautilus illustrated by either Anne or Susanna Lister next to a nautilus shell. Book: This edition of Historiae Conchyliorum (History of Shells), written by their father Martin Lister, was published in 1770. Shell: Nautilus shell, Nautilus belauensis from near Palau Islands (PRI 50539). Paleontological Research Institution.
Works with illustrations by Anna and Susanna Lister
Lister, M. 1685–1688. De cochleis. London. Link
Lister, M. 1685–1692. Historiae conchyliorum. London. Link
Lister, M. 1695. The anatomy of the scallop. Philosophical Transactions 19: 567–570, fig. no. 229. Link
Lister, M. 1823. Historia sive synopsis methodica conchyliorum, editio tertia. [Index by L.W. Dillwyn]. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Link
Biographical references & further reading
Matton, W.G., and T. Rackett. 1804. An historical account of the testaceological writers. Transactions of the Linnean Society of London 7: 119–244. Link
Roos, A.M. 2011. The art of science: a ‘rediscovery’ of the Lister copperplates. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 66: 19–40. Link
Roos, A.M. 2013. Shell Game: Martin Lister and the Conchological Collections of Sir Hans Sloane. The Sloane Letters Project. Link
Roos, A.M. 2019. Martin Lister and his remarkable daughters: The art of science in the Seventeenth Century. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
Tobin, B.F. 2018. Scientific artistry of the Lister sisters. Nature 562: 190–191. Link
Woodley, J. 1994. Anne Lister, illustrator of Martin Lister's Historiae Conchyliorum (1685–1692). Archives of Natural History 21: 225–229. Link