The dedicated and gifted amateur has traditionally made enormous contributions to the study of archaeology, local history, folklore, language and natural science - particularly in Ireland. Cynthia Longfield, born in London in 1896, the third daughter of a wealthy Anglo-Irish family which owned the Castle Mary estate, in Cloyne, east Cork, was entirely self-taught. Caught somewhere between the contrasting worlds of the Irish, the Anglo-Irish and the English, her name does not appear in Boylan's A Dictionary of Irish Biography, yet this practical pioneering naturalist and world traveller inspired generations of natural scientists.
Energy, imagination, curiosity and a relentlessly analytical mind made her a world authority on the Odanata - dragonflies. Her fascination with the natural sciences may well have been inherited from her maternal grandfather, who was a scientist, but the endless days she spent wandering the gardens and fields of Castle Mary as well as the local coastline, familiarising herself with the insects, flowers, birds and wildlife, were decisive for her future. She looked, and studied; collected and watched.
By the time most girls of her age and class were preparing for their coming out, she had already acquired a good amateur understanding of natural history, particularly entomology. Darwin, whom she discovered as a child, was her hero, and she would eventually follow his famous path throughout the Pacific Islands, including the Galapagos.
With the outbreak of the first World War, Longfield never did have her London season. Instead, as she could already drive, she joined the Army Service Corps and later worked in an aeroplane factory. The war ended but with it died Edwardian society. Many of the young men of her generation were also dead. In May 1920, Castle Mary was burnt down. But the Longfields were determined to sustain a way of life that had changed. The following year, Cynthia was sent by her parents on a voyage to South America with family friends. It marked the beginning of her world travels.
After arriving in Rio de Janeiro, the party travelled through the Andes to Chile and crossed Lake Titicaca, then explored Peru and visited Jamaica and Cuba on the way home. She kept diaries detailing birds and insects she had seen.
In 1923, she went to Egypt with her mother and sister just as Tutankhamen's tomb was being opened. Later that year, she secured a place on the famous 1924 St George expedition to the Pacific during which a team, of which she was part, replicated Darwin's journey and spent 18 months collecting specimens for the Natural History Museum.
On return from the expedition, she became an associate member of the museum and worked there until her retirement in 1957. Her next trip was to Mato Grosso in Brazil. Dragonflies had become her specialist subject. When her father died in 1929, she used her legacy to travel throughout the tropics, exploring Indonesia. In 1934, two years after visiting Canada, she went on a six-month expedition through East Africa. All this as a single white woman. She returned to Africa in 1937, travelling through the Sudan until malaria forced her home.
With the outbreak of the second World War, she again volunteered and joined the Auxilliary Fire Services, initially as a driver. Before this, however, her two African journeys had already introduced two new species of dragonfly to the museum collection. Her book, The Dragonflies of the British Isles (1937), quickly became the standard text. It was revised and extended in a second edition in 1945. In 1960, she and fellow authors Philip Corbet and Norman Moore published Dragonflies, in the distinguished Collins New Naturalist series. Longfield also published many scientific papers on the description and classifications of dragonflies. Even after her retirement, she continued travelling and attending entomological conferences all over the world. She died some months before her 95th birthday in 1991.
By travelling to each of the five continents and observing many natural wonders, the formidable but witty Longfield certainly defied the expectations of a woman of her time and class. Despite her years in London, Cloyne remained her home and she retired there. She donated her fine collection of natural history books and offprints to the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin in 1979.
Her biography, Madame Dragonfly, written by her grand-niece, Jane Hayter-Hames, was published shortly before Longfield's death. (Pentland Press, Durham, 1991).