User:Animalparty/sandbox/Catherine Cooper Hopley

Catherine Cooper Hopley (October 5, 1817 – May 1, 1911), also known by the pseudonym Sarah L. Jones, was a British author, governess, artist, and naturalist known for her books on the American Civil War and her nature books for children and general audiences, including the first popular book on snakes in English.

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 P. Hopley (1821–1904) immigrated to America and became a noted publisher and political figure in Ohio. Her youngest brother Thomas Hopley (1819-1876) was a schoolteacher convicted in the beating death of a student in the Eastbourne manslaughter trial.

Little of Hopley's early family life is known. She came to the United States in the mid-1950s to visit family in Ohio and Indiana. She was active in Cleveland, from 1855 to 1859, displaying watercolours in the Ohio State Fair and giving instruction in drawing, painting, music and French. In 1860 she traveled to Virginia, where she was present at the outbreak of the American Civil War.

She traveled throughout the American south and Midwest, taught in Virginia was a tutor to the children of Florida governor John Milton. SHe left Florida in 1863,

and published an account of her travels in 1863.


 * Life in the South

While collecting information on birds during the Civil War, she was suspected of being a British spy and imprisoned for several months. Her biography of Stonewall Jackson

Her 1882 book Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life was described in the British Quarterly Review as "the most thorough, the most complete, and the most popularly readable that has been published in English on the subject."
 * Snakes

Additional reviews:

She died in London on May 1, 1911.

Books

 * Life in the South From the Commencement of the War (1863)
 * "Stonewall" Jackson, Late General of the Confederate States Army (1863)
 * Rambles and Adventures in the Wilds of the West (1872)
 * Stories of Red Men from Early American History (1880)
 * Aunt Jenny's American Pets (1872)
 * Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life (1882)
 * British Reptiles and Batrachians (1888)