Anna Brownell Jameson

Anna Brownell Jameson (1794-1860) was an art historian and literary critic, most famous for Characteristics of Women (1832), about Shakespeare's heroines, and Sacred and Legendary Art (1848-1864). She was known for her expertise on Italian and European painting. She also wrote an important travelogue of her trip through Upper Canada in 1836, where she visited her husband who had taken up a judicial appointment there. 

Twelve letters from Jameson feature in the archive. She likely met Elizabeth Jesser Reid in the literary and political circles of London in which they both moved, and they were both friends with and inspirations for members of the next generation of Victorian women writers and activists, including Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes.

Jameson was not directly involved in Bedford College, and could be skeptical about what women's colleges could achieve in terms of women's liberation. But, in writing critical works directed at women readers, she worked towards female education in a different way. She was particularly concerned with the conditions of governesses, perhaps due to her own experiences working as a governess before her marriage. She was also interested in the reform of hospitals, prisons and workhouses, and she delivered her thoughts on these topics in private lectures for friends.

Jameson died in 1860, six years before Elizabeth Jesser Reid, leaving Sacred and Legendary Art to be finished by her friend, Lady Eastlake.