Jean Kilgour Ingelow

JI 's mother, born Jean Kilgour , was deeply religious. At her instigation, the entire Ingelow family gathered to pray twice daily. Tardy arrivals were charged a halfpenny.

JI never married and did not have any children. She spent much of her life caring for her younger siblings and their families, and in later years her ailing mother .

JI was educated at home by her mother and an unmarried aunt . She was occasionally instructed by the masters employed to teach the boys of the family. Her mother's curriculum centred on religion but...

Her mother held strict Evangelical attitudes, so balls, theatre, and dancing were strictly forbidden to all of the Ingelow children.

Around the age of fourteen JI began penning poetry on the window shutters of her bedroom, after having been denied paper by her strictly evangelical mother . Her earliest surviving poem is Katherine of Aragon