Jameson, Anna Brownell (1794–1860)

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Jameson, Anna Brownell (1794–1860)

Irish writer. Name variations: Mrs. Jameson; Anna Bronwell Jameson. Born Anna Brownell Murphy in Dublin, Ireland, on May 17, 1794; died in Ealing,London, England, on March 17, 1860; eldest of five daughters of D (enis) Brownell Murphy (a noted Irish miniaturist and enamel painter) and an English mother; married Robert Jameson (a lawyer), in 1825 (separated September 1837; he died in 1854).

Selected writings:

The Diary of an Ennuyée (1826); Loves of the Poets (1829); Celebrated Female Sovereigns (1831); Characteristics of Women (1832); Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838); (translator) Social Life in Germany (1840); Companion to the Public Picture Galleries of London (1842); Memoirs of Early Italian Painters (1845); Memoirs and Essays on Art, Literature and Morals (1846); (edited) Sacred and Legendary Art (4 vols., 1848–60); Sisters of Charity (1855); The Communion of Labor (1856).

Chiefly known for her works on travel and art, Anna Brownell Jameson was the daughter of D. Brownell Murphy, an Irish patriot and miniature-painter-in-ordinary to the Princess Charlotte Augusta (1796–1817). Murphy had probably been fleeing the Irish rebellion of 1798 when he moved his family to Cumberland, in the north of England; they eventually settled in Hanwell, near London.

Young Anna's education was haphazard, as was that of most girls in 19th-century England. Independent and impetuous, she amused her four sisters with stories and instigated a revolt against their governess. By age 16, she had become a governess in the family of the Marquis of Winchester where she remained for several years. There, she met her future husband, Robert Jameson, a lawyer with an artistic bent, around 1820. Though an engagement was immediately made and broken and a grand tour of the Continent as governess-companion to a young charge in the family of Lord Hatherton intervened, they were married in 1825. The newlyweds had been settled in London for only a week when Anna Jameson knew that the marriage was a monumental mistake. Robert Jameson proved thoughtless and inconsiderate.

Fortunately, Anna Jameson would have a large contingent of friends. A journal, written in a fictitious narrative and kept while she had been abroad, came to the attention of an eccentric bookseller who had taught her to play the guitar. Jameson agreed to have it printed in exchange for a Spanish guitar. The Diary of an Ennuyée was an immediate success and brought her a host of intense friendships with the literary great, including Fanny Kemble , Lady Noel Byron , Jane Welsh Carlyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning , George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans ), Elizabeth Gaskell , and Mary Russell Mitford . Jameson's many sojourns in Germany added other friends: Ottilie von Goethe , the critic Ludwig Tieck, the painter Moritz Retzsch, and Friedrich von Schlegel.

In 1829, when Robert Jameson was appointed puisne judge (judge of inferior rank) on the island of Dominica, he went alone. He returned to England in 1833 but, with the help of her powerful friends, was assigned a post in Canada; again, he went alone. Anna Jameson lived with and would travel with her father.

In the winter of 1836, against her better judgment, she boarded a ship to join her husband in Toronto, where he had been appointed chancellor of the province. When he failed to meet her ship as it docked in New York, Jameson had to make her way to Canada, a difficult trek during the wintry season. While there, she undertook a journey to Indian settlements, explored Lake Huron, and saw much of emigrant and Indian life that was then unknown to travelers. Eight months later, the couple separated, and she returned to England. The result was Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838), in which she evoked the physical setting of Canada juxtaposed with a woman's inner journey. When Robert Jameson died in 1854, he left no provision for his wife in his will. She lived on an annuity of £100 raised by her friends as well as a royal pension.

Anna Jameson began to devote her attention to writing. Her first work was Characteristics of Women (1832), analyses of Shakespeare's heroines. She then began her four-volume series of Sacred and Legendary Art. When she died at Ealing, London, of bronchial pneumonia—complications from a cold she refused to take seriously—the last of the series was in preparation. It was completed under the title The History of Our Lord in Art by Lady Elizabeth Eastlake .

Besides writing other books on travel, biography, and art criticism, Jameson took a keen interest in questions affecting the education, occupations, and support of women. Hospitals, penitentiaries, prisons, and workhouses all caught her eye. Her private lectures before friends became well-springs for many later reformers and philanthropists. In her later years (1855–56), Jameson became interested in the Sisters of Charity and spent much of her time abroad investigating their methods. Upon returning to England, she lectured on the Sisters and the role of women as reformers. She also sponsored feminist reformers Barbara Bodichon and Adelaide Procter .