Anna Brownell Jameson

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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.
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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.
It was a long...
Dedications Bessie Rayner Parkes
BRP dedicated the work to Anna Jameson .
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 Harriet Martineau
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 Elizabeth Rigby
While in London, ER renewed old friendships and established new. She socialized with Sir Edwin Henry Landseer , John Wilson Croker , Henry Chorley , Lord Lansdowne , and Anna Jameson (with whom she corresponded)...
Friends, Associates Mary Russell Mitford
She knew most of the literary women of her day, including Felicia Hemans (who wrote to ask her for an autograph),
L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, editor. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents. Hurst and Blackett, 1882.
1: 173-4
Jane Porter , Amelia Opie (that warm-hearted person),
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: 213
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...
Friends, Associates Matilda Hays
She remained friends with Anna Jameson , Isa Craig , and Emily Faithfull , but the biographer of the last-named surmises that Hays's loyalty to Faithfull (whose reputation was tarnished because of her involvement in...
Friends, Associates Georgiana Chatterton
In Italy GC met one of her closest friends, Helen Selina Blackwood , Caroline Norton 's elder sister.
Dering, Edward Heneage, and Georgiana Chatterton. Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton. Hurst and Blackett, 1878.
26
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Back in England, she met and liked Walter Savage Landor .
Dering, Edward Heneage, and Georgiana Chatterton. Memoirs of Georgiana, Lady Chatterton. Hurst and Blackett, 1878.
37
She moved and entertained...
Friends, Associates Mary Howitt
Feminist and author Anna Jameson was a longstanding friend.
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
171
Friends, Associates Sara Coleridge
Among women writers, in addition to Dorothy Wordsworth , Joanna Baillie , and Maria Jane Jewsbury , SC also knew Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Anna Jameson , Elizabeth Rigby , Elizabeth Gaskell , and Harriet Martineau
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.
114
Friends, Associates Anna Swanwick
Other friends mentioned by her niece and biographer were Fredrika Bremer , Anna Brownell Jameson , Frances Power Cobbe , Thomas Carlyle , George MacDonald , Lady Eastlake , Elizabeth Rundle Charles , Lady Martin
Friends, Associates Fanny Kemble
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
Friends, Associates Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
BLSB 's other prominent women friends included Adelaide Procter , Anna Mary Howitt (Mary 's daughter), and Anna Brownell Jameson .
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
58, 71

Timeline

1826
William Saunders and Edward John Otley established themselves as the lending-library and bookselling firm of Saunders and Otley at 50 Conduit Street, London.
December 1855
Barbara Leigh Smith , later Bodichon, founded the Married Women's Property Committee (sometimes called the Women's Committee) to draw up a petition for a married women's property bill.
14 March 1856
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 .
1858
Louisa Twining became secretary of the newly-founded Workhouse Visiting Society .
March 1858
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...
7 July 1859
The first meeting of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women was held in London; founding members included Anna Jameson , Emily Faithfull , Jessie Boucherett , Adelaide Procter , Bessie Rayner Parkes , Isa Craig , and Sarah Lewin .
August 1864
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.