Elizabeth’s father, John Gallemore Dale, died in 1871 when she was three years old and he was only 31. He had been a member of the chemical manufacturing firm Roberts, Dale, and Co, established in Warrington in 1852, and specialising in dyes and inks. Her mother, Clara, married again, to Robert Bennett, a ‘merchant engineer’, twelve years her junior. At age 13 Elizabeth Dale was living in Withington (now Greater Manchester) with her ‘new’ family. She was educated at home with a governess but, at some point, moved to a private school in Buxton, Derbyshire, a county whose geology was to prove an inspiration to her. 

After a brief spell at Owens College, Manchester (the future Manchester University, where Marshall Ward had been both a student, 1875, and a teacher, 1883-86 – he latterly lived in Withington), Elizabeth Dale entered Girton College. It was as a post-graduate that Dale encountered Marshall Ward, their Mancunian backgrounds providing a ready connection. Dale’s first publication was jointly with Marshall Ward in the Journal of the Linnean Society (1898); the subject, Craterostigma pumilum, was a rare plant from Somali-Land (sic) presented to the Botanic Garden by a traveller in Africa. Thereafter, she published on her own though often, as in her 1901 paper in the Annals of Botany, thanking him “…for allowing me to work in the University Botanical Laboratory, and for the help which he always so willingly gives”.   It was Marshall Ward, Fellow of the Royal Society, who communicated her lengthy and beautifully illustrated paper to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, read in 1905 and published shortly before his death in 1906. Unsurprisingly, given Marshall Ward’s oversight of her early career, her first publications were on aspects of plant pathology.  However, Dale continued to publish until 1914 when, writing on the subject of soil fungi and published in Annales Mycologici, she described herself as “Garden Steward, Girton College”.

Elizabeth Dale’s interest in geology was mentioned briefly above. In 1900 she published a small book (176pp.), Scenery and Geology of the Peak of Derbyshire (Sampson Low, Marston & Co. Ltd.). Its reviewer in Nature was not altogether complimentary, doubting “… the wisdom of introducing so much general geology in what is essentially a local guide”. In a remark aimed more at the publisher than at Dale, the reviewer added, “The book has a somewhat provincial aspect in its ‘get up’”. She did not again publish a major work on the subject of geology, confining herself to minor observations in the Glacialists’ Magazine. On returning to Cambridge in 1897, she was a member of the Sedgwick Club (for geologists) for the next six years, on four occasions joining their field trips, each lasting several days.

The gap between ‘graduation’ and her return to Cambridge is probably explained in part by Dale living with her family in Buxton while studying the geology of the Peak District and preparing her book. She kept in touch with the Cambridge geologists, and broadened her geological horizons, for in 1890, 1891, 1892, and 1893 she joined departmental field trips organised by the Sedgwick Club to, respectively, the Lake District, Plas Tan Y Bwlch, the Malverns, and the Isle of Man. In 1893 she also attended the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), held that year in Nottingham (she is also listed among attendees at the 1899 meeting, held in Dover).

Wherever she went Elizabeth Dale was as interested in the flora as much as the geology. The Buxton Museum and Art Gallery holds her collection of herbarium specimens. By visiting online, “Collections in the Landscape”, one can see the well-preserved Wood Anemone she collected when 16 years old. The collection she made between 1884 and 1897 reflects her travels; while 45 specimens come from Derbyshire, two come from the Isle of Man (1893), and there is even one from Paris (1886).  By the time of her last publications she was almost inevitably studying soil fungi, thereby drawing upon her extensive knowledge of both plants and soil types.