Anna Brownell (Murphy) Jameson

Anna Brownell (Murphy) Jameson , 1794-1860, English essayist, b. Dublin. The diary of her travels on the Continent as governess to a wealthy family was later published as The Diary of an Ennuyée (1826). Jameson's works—especially Shakespeare's Heroines (1932)—were popular in her day, but only Sacred and Legendary Art (1848-60; ed. by E. M. Hurll, 1896) had lasting currency.

Jameson, Anna Brownell (née Murphy) (b Dublin, 17 May 1794; d London, 17 Mar. 1860). British writer, daughter of an Irish miniaturist, Denis Brownell Murphy (d 1842), who moved to England in 1798. She married a barrister, Robert Jameson, in 1825, but they soon separated. By this time she was already a successful author and for the rest of her life she kept up a prodigious and varied literary output. Her most famous book is probably Characteristics of Women (1832), later retitled Shakespeare's Heroines; it is illustrated with her own etchings and dedicated to the actress Fanny Kemble, one of her many famous and influential friends. In the last two decades of her life her writings were mainly on art and she has been described as the first professional English art historian. Her first major book in the field was A Handbook to the Public Galleries of Art in and near London (1842). She modestly said it ‘ought to have fallen into the hands of Dr Waagen, or some such bigwig, instead of poor little me’, but in fact it is an impressively detailed and accurate work. Her other books include several on Christian iconography, among them Sacred and Legendary Art (2 vols., 1848) and Legends of the Madonna (1852). Although antiquated in certain respects, they are clearly written, full of information, and still useful.

Jameson, Anna Brownell (1794–1860), first attracted attention in 1826 with A Lady's Diary (later re-titled The Diary of an Ennuyée), describing a visit to Italy. The work for which she is now chiefly remembered is Characteristics of Women (1832, later known as Shakespeare's Heroines), dedicated to Fanny Kemble. Shakespeare she saw as ‘the Poet of Womankind’, whose heroines display all the aspects and complexities of womanhood. She was a close friend of the Brownings and of M. R. Mitford.