Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Anna Brownell Jameson
-
Standard Name: Jameson, Anna Brownell
Birth Name: Anna Brownell Murphy
Nickname: Nina
Married Name: Anna Brownell Jameson
Indexed Name: Anna Brownwell Murphy
ABJ
, a prolific and professional writer of non-fiction, is best remembered for her travel writing, her treatises on art, and her provocative studies of fictional and famous women. In England she is noted for her feminist criticism and biography, and for her support of the younger set of writers and activists who founded the English Woman's Journal. In Canadian literary history she is remembered primarily for her forward-looking, feminist travel narrative Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada. Critics are just beginning to take stock of the achievements and influence of one of the foremost women of letters in early Victorian England.
Mermin, Dorothy. Godiva’s Ride: Women of Letters in England 1830-1880. Indiana University Press, 1993.
"Anna Brownell Jameson" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Anna_Brownell_Jameson_1844.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
For a young woman who had never attended university (as she of course could not at this time) to offer a translation from a classical language was both courageous and confident.
Parkes, Bessie Rayner. Essays on Woman’s Work. Alexander Strahan, 1865.
prelims
Some of the essays were reprinted from earlier articles in the English Woman's Journal. This text too was reissued by Cambridge University Press
in 2010...
Friends, Associates
Bessie Rayner Parkes
Writer Anna Jameson
played an important role in the lives of these two women, acting in a maternal role, encouraging Parkes in her poetic endeavours and Smith in her artistic projects.
Rendall, Jane. “’A Moral Engine’? Feminism, Liberalism and the English Woman’s Journal”. Equal or Different: Women’s Politics 1800-1914, edited by Jane Rendall, Basil Blackwell, 1987, pp. 112 - 38.
Mary Russell Mitford
was another who knew FK
well even apart from their connection through the theatre.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. L’Estrange, Alfred Guy KinghamEditor , Harper and Brothers, 1870.
2: 119-20
Other friends from this period or soon afterwards included the future poet and novelist Caroline Norton
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
58, 71
Friends, Associates
Fanny Kemble
Harriet Siddons was the widow of Sarah Siddons
's youngest son, the actor-manager Henry
. While in Edinburgh, FK
met Anna Jameson
and engaged in frivolous courtships.
Marshall, Dorothy. Fanny Kemble. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1977.
28, 42
Clinton, Catherine. Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars. Simon and Schuster, 2000.
33
Friends, Associates
Jessie Boucherett
Partly through her membership of the Kensington Society
(a social and political discussion group of about fifty women inaugurated in 1865), JB
broadened her acquaintance with significant members of the feminist movement, including Frances Power Cobbe
Friends, Associates
Jessie White Mario
JWM
employed Anna Jameson
's niece and biographer Gerardine Bate Macpherson
as her personal secretary. Gerardine lived in with the Marios for a year, until she died in 1878 (in Jessie's arms).
Daniels, Elizabeth Adams. Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary. Ohio University Press, 1972.
179
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Gaskell
EG
was glad to escape the storm of controversy that her novel had raised in Manchester, and to be feted in London. She already knew Mary Howitt and Geraldine Jewsbury
(who lived in Manchester). Although...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Martineau
HM
's social circle vastly expanded at this time until she knew virtually all the prominent people, particularly the political men, of her day. As she recorded in her Autobiography, however, she refused to...
For nearly six years she was an invalid, though she was able to work very productively for the first few years and remained well enough to receive visitors. She was helped financially by two female...
Friends, Associates
Catharine Maria Sedgwick
Closest to CMS
were her siblings and their spouses, several of whom were also published authors. The Sedgwick family and Fanny Kemble
were apparently the inner circle of the literary scene in the Berkshires,...
Friends, Associates
Augusta Ada Byron
AAB
remained close friends with Mary Somerville's family, and particularly with her eldest son by her first marriage, Woronzow Greig
, for the rest of her life. Somerville not only fostered Ada's mathematical aptitude, but...
A petitionfor Reform of the Married Women's Property Law, organized by the Married Women's Property Committee
and signed by many prominent women, was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
May 1856
J. W. Kaye
published anonymously Outrages on Women, a ground-breaking consideration of wife assault, in the North British Review.
2 May 1857
A grand dome designed by Panizzi
was opened in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum
.
The English Woman's Journal, a monthly magazine on the theory and practice of organised feminism, began publication in London, with financial support from Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
and others, under the editorship of...
The English Woman's Journal, a practical and theoretical source of organized feminism from London, merged into The Alexandra Magazine and English Woman's Journal.
April 1879
James Murray
—editor since 1 March of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary—issued an Appeal for readers to supply illustrative quotations.
18 August 1882
The Married Women's Property Act gave women the right to all the property they earned or acquired before or during marriage.
