Jameson

Jameson, Anna Brownell (1794-1860), a prolific writer on art and various other subjects, was the daughter of a Dublin miniature painter named Murphy. After having been for several years a governess, she was married in 1825; but she was not happy with her husband, who left her in England when, four years later, he went to Dominica to take up a legal appointment. Mrs. Jameson's first work was published in 1826, but her Characteristics of Women (1832), a series of essays on Shakespeare's female characters, was her first book of any great merit. During a visit to the Continent in the following year she became intimate with Ottilie von Goethe, and met Tieck and Schlegel. Her best-known works are Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art and History of our Lord and of John the Baptist, as represented in Art, which was finished by Lady Eastlake.