Mrs. Jameson

Anna Brownell Jameson (1794–1860), who published as Mrs. Jameson, was an Anglo-Irish writer and one of the first Englishwomen to live as an art critic. The daughter of a Dublin miniature painter, she worked as a governess, made an unhappy marriage to a barrister later posted to Canada, and supported herself by her pen. The Diary of an Ennuyée, The Loves of the Poets, later retitled The Romance of Biography, and Characteristics of Women, on Shakespeare's heroines, made her name; her Sacred and Legendary Art established the study of Christian iconography in England. She was a friend of the Brownings and an advocate of women's work and education.