Anna Brownell Jameson

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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.
xiii
Sepia-toned photograph of Anna Brownell Jameson, standing with her elbow resting on a book that sits atop a small cloth-draped table. She wears a light dress with white lace trim around the neck, a second layer over the shoulders, apparently a built-in shawl trimmed with dark gauzy cloth. A long, dark, gauzy scarf is draped behind her and over her arms. Her dark curly hair is topped by a bonnet of light and dark ribbons. In one hand she holds a small pair of spectacles.

Milestones

19 May 1794
Anna Brownell Murphy (later ABJ ) was born in Dublin; she was the eldest of five daughters.
Thomas, Clara. Love and Work Enough: The Life of Anna Jameson. University of Toronto Press, 1967.
3-4
Perhaps 1815
Anna Brownwell Murphy (later ABJ ) published A First or Mother's Dictionary for Children. If this date is correct, her first job as a governess had just ended.
It is the Osborne Collection and the UCLA catalogues which supply, speculatively, this early date.
OCLC WorldCat.
1832
ABJ published in two volumes Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical and Historical, later renamed Shakespeare 's Heroines; it was dedicated to Fanny Kemble .
Johnston, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters. Scolar Press, 1997.
237
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908.
1838
ABJ published in three volumes her travel narrative Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada.
Johnston, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters. Scolar Press, 1997.
237
17 March 1860
ABJ died of pneumonia in London.
Thomas, Clara. Love and Work Enough: The Life of Anna Jameson. University of Toronto Press, 1967.
215
By 14 May 1864
The History of Our Lord as Exemplified in Works of Art, written by ABJ as the fourth volume of her series Sacred and Legendary Art and completed by Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake , was published posthumously.
Johnston, Judith. Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters. Scolar Press, 1997.
238
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870.

Biography

In a letter to the Murphy family in 1833, ABJ 's sister Charlotte repeatedly refers to her as Nina; this was the family's nickname for her. To the Brownings she was known as Aunt Nina or Moña Nina.
Thomas, Clara. Love and Work Enough: The Life of Anna Jameson. University of Toronto Press, 1967.
78, 171

Birth

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