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.
CFC
takes her examples of great works done by women from three books published only the previous year: The Communion of Labour by Anna Jameson
, Eastern Hospitals and English Nurses by Frances Margaret Taylor
Intertextuality and Influence
George Eliot
To research her next novel, GE
benefited from further travel in Italy, as well as by a vast course of reading which included Anna Jameson
on monasticism.
Haight, Gordon S. George Eliot: A Biography. Oxford University Press.
349
Intertextuality and Influence
George Eliot
In December 1870 she began writing Miss Brooke, a narrative which became part of Middlemarch as the history of its heroine. Not long after this she thought of combining this story of a daughter...
Occupation
Sarah Stickney Ellis
SSE
supported her husband's missionary activities, helped edit his writings, and worked with him to promote temperance. She felt uneasy about her role as minister's wife and the invisibility which it brought; when she agreed...
Literary responses
Sarah Stickney Ellis
Mary Ann Evans
, later George Eliot, read SSE
's conduct manuals in the 1840s, but it is unlikely that Eliot took the advice too seriously, since other intellectual women were vocal in their distaste...
politics
Emily Faithfull
By 1859 The English Woman's Journal was felt to be no longer adequate on its own for promoting women's work, and Jessie Boucherett
suggested the creation of a society which would deal specifically with this...
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...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Gaskell
Some reviews applauded the courage of Ruth and its author; others decried the subject-matter and language. Henry Fothergill Chorley
's Athenæum review was mixed: he admired some scenes for their honesty and naturalness, but was...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Gaskell
North and South reflects the debate over middle-class female employment which had been powerfully voiced by Anna Jameson
, to whom EG
confessed herself greatly indebted in a letter of 1855.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. The Letters of Mrs Gaskell. Editors Chapple, J. A. V. and Arthur Pollard, Harvard University Press.
338
The case for...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Gore
The title of this novel, published in 1836, echoes and responds to Anna Brownell Jameson
's Diary of an Ennuyée, 1826. The hero, Byronic Lord Eustace Hartston, keeps the heroine, Lady Harriet Delaval, some...
Intertextuality and Influence
Dora Greenwell
Throughout the essay DG
relates her arguments to those of John Stuart Mill
, Anna Jameson
, and Bessie Rayner Parkes
, and though she agrees with them on certain points (mainly their call for...
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...
Literary responses
Felicia Hemans
Jewsbury
portrayed FH
herself as an English gentlewoman who is as feminine as a poetess ought to be, but she acknowledged the gender-bending that category involved by inviting her readers to contemplate the possibility of...
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.
171
Literary responses
Mary Howitt
Mary Russell Mitford
confided to Elizabeth Barrett
, who had been charmed by The Neighbours, that she thought the translations' lack of popularity a sign of the poor taste of English novel-readers. Ah! dearest...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Jameson, Anna Brownell. Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad. Saunders and Otley, 1834.
Jameson, Anna Brownell. Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada. Saunders and Otley, 1838.