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.
The subtitle of this novel (which in earlier centuries had been the title of a bawdy song) here alludes to a proverb about the impossible perfections of maids' husbands and bachelors' children. This first novel...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Maria Jane Jewsbury
In her review of Anna Brownell Jameson
's Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns, MJJ
enters into a discussion of education, gender, writing, and power: when women are more rationally educated, they will make better...
Occupation
Adelaide Kemble
AK
's stature as a singer was evaluated shortly after her retirement by Anna Jameson
in her Memoirs and Essays, 1846, and twenty years after it by Henry Chorley
in his Thirty Years' Musical...
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. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 119-20
Other friends from this period or soon afterwards included the future poet and novelist Caroline Norton
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.
28, 42
Clinton, Catherine. Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars. Simon and Schuster.
33
Literary responses
Sarah Lewis
Reviews were mostly favourable; the humour magazine Punch paid Woman's Mission the compliment of burlesquing it. Sarah Stickney Ellis
praised it in her Mothers of England, 1843, the book which completed her series whose...
Intertextuality and Influence
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
This narrative was apparently planned to fit its six illustrations: portraits of imaginary beauties by Edmund Thomas Parris
(whose work featured also in Gems of Beauty).
The novel followed on the heels of Anna Jameson
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.
179
Textual Features
Jessie White Mario
In a review of Robert Browning
's collected letters, One Letter More From Robert (March 1899) she quotes an unpublished letter sent from Browning to Anna Jameson
, which, she argues, displays the Brownings' true...
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...
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...
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.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
2: 213
Textual Features
Susanna Moodie
Roughing It in the Bush is a collection of sketches about a difficult adjustment to pioneer life in Canada, based on real incidents in SM
's life before her move to Belleville and embellished...
