I helped rescue a Polish ethnologist

I helped rescue a Polish ethnologist today. Her name is Maria Antonia Czaplicka and she was born in Warsaw in 1886. In 1910 she won a scholarship to London and the LSE to do a PhD (leaving Poland at the same time as anthropology super-star Bronislaw Malinowski). She did her fieldwork in Siberia and in the winter of 1914 she travelled some 5000 kilometres along the frozen river Yenisey, taking photos and making notes.

She was only the second person in Europe to get a PhD in anthropology; the first woman to join the Royal Geographical Society; and, in 1915, the only woman to teach at Oxford. However, when the professor she replaced returned from the fronts of World War I, she was fired. She worked at the Deparment of Anatomy at the University of Bristol for a while, but her contract was not renewed. She had financial troubles and ended up committing suicide, by poisoning, in 1921, only 35 years old.

Her books on Central Asia and Siberia are obviously erudite, but also delightfully written, and My Siberian Year, 1916, was a great public success. What impresses me is the respect with which she treats the people she meets and analyses. There is no Western triumphalism here and not a trace of condescension. She is far smarter than most other Edwardians.

Czaplicka already had a Wikipedia entry, but links to her works were missing. Today I supplied two. By a simple click, you can now read:

M..A. Czaplicka, Turks of Central Asia in History and at the Present Day, an Ethnological Inquiry into the Pan-Turanian Problem, and Bibliographical Material Relating to the Early Turks and the Present Turks of Central Asia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918)
Aboriginal Siberia: A Study in Social Anthropology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914)

Hers is a sad story. A brave and beautiful woman who found more obstacles at Oxford than in the wilds of Siberia. I hope she will live long and prosper on the web.