Anna Botsford Comstock

Anna Botsford Comstock (born Sept. 1, 1854, near Otto, Cattaraugus county, N.Y., U.S.—died Aug. 24, 1930, Ithaca, N.Y.) was an American illustrator, writer, and educator remembered for her work in nature study.

Anna Botsford entered Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1874, but she left after two years. In 1878 she married John Henry Comstock, a young entomologist on the Cornell faculty who interested her in insect illustration. Throughout their marriage she functioned as his assistant, illustrating his lectures and publications on insects. Her work was usually on an informal, unpaid basis, but when he was chief entomologist in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1879–81), she received a formal appointment. There she prepared the drawings for his Report of the Entomologist (on citrus scale insects) of 1880. She then reentered Cornell and took a degree in natural history in 1885. Thereafter she studied wood engraving at Cooper Union, New York City, in order to prepare illustrations for her husband’s Introduction to Entomology (1888), and in 1888 she was one of the first four women admitted to Sigma Xi, a national honour society for the sciences.

Comstock made engravings for the more than 600 plates in her husband’s Manual for the Study of Insects (1895) and for Insect Life (1897) and How to Know the Butterflies (1904), both of which she co-authored. Her engravings were also widely exhibited and won several prizes. Books that she both wrote and illustrated include Ways of the Six-Footed (1903), How to Keep Bees (1905), The Handbook of Nature Study (1911, with more than two dozen editions), The Pet Book (1914), and Trees at Leisure (1916).

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In 1895 Comstock was appointed to the New York State Committee for the Promotion of Agriculture, under whose auspices she planned and conducted an experimental course of nature study for public schools. When the program was approved for statewide use through the extension service of Cornell, she wrote and spoke in its behalf, helped train teachers, and prepared classroom materials; from 1897 she taught nature study at Cornell.

Comstock lectured frequently to teachers’ and farmers’ institutes and at universities. She was editor of Nature-Study Review (1917–1923) and was on the staff of Country Life in America. She also wrote a novel, Confessions to a Heathen Idol (1906). In 1922 she retired from Cornell as professor emerita but continued to teach in the summer session.