Life
1794-1860 [née Murphy]; b. Dublin; dg. Brownell Murphy, miniaturist
and painter in ordinary to Princess Charlotte; moved to North of England
from childhood; governess of Marquis of Winchester at 16; friendship with
Kembles, contact and close friend of Brownings, and the Carlyles; met
Robert Jameson, young barrister, engagement then broken off; governess
to Lord Hatherton; wrote Diary of an Ennuyée at this time;
renewed engagement and marriage, 1824; A Lady’s Diary (1826,
later re-titled The Diary of an Ennuyée), recounting an
Italian trip; The Loves of the Poets (1829), and Celebrated
Female Sovereigns (1831); separation due to ‘incompatibility
of temperament’ [JMC]; accompanied father on tour of Europe; Shakespeare’s
Heroines (1832 - properly Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical,
and Historical), adorned with her own ills., was was dedicated to
Fanny Kemble; in it she treated of 225 heroines in Shakespeare, categorising
them by intellect, passion, affections and history, and treating Shakespeare
as ‘Poet of Womankind’; assist Scott with his revised edition
of Count Anthony Hamilton’s Memoirs of Gramont (1846); Visits
and Sketches at Home and Abroad (1834), after second trip; joined
husband in Canada, 1836; Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada
(1838); settled in England again within a year; Tales and Miscellanies
(1838); translated plays of Princess Amelia of Saxony, as Pictures
of Social Life in Germany (1840), with intro. and notes; trans from
Dr. Waagen, Rubens, His Life and Genius [n.d.]; Memoirs of the
Early Italian Painters and of the Progress of Painting in Italy
(1845); Memoirs and Essays in Art, Literature, and Social Morals
[n.d.]; Sacred and Legendary Art (1848); A Commnplace Book of
Thoughts, Memoiries, and Fancies, Original and Selected (1854); Sisters
of Charity, Catholic and Protestant, At Home and Abroad (1855); amelioration
of position of women, Lectures on the Social Employments of Women
and The Communion of Labour; civil list pension; The
History of Our Lord Exemplified in Works of Art, with that of his Types,
St John the Baptist, and Other Persons of the Old and New Testaments,
completed by Lady Eastlake; d. 17, 1860. CAB DNB JMC DIW OCEL OCIL
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References
Dictionary of National Biography; cites dates as supra;
dg. Dr. Brownell Murphy [qv], married and separated from the speaker and
att-gen. Ontario, Robert Jameson; Dairy of an Ennuyé (1826);
Characteristics of Women (1832); Visits and Sketches (1834);
Companion to Public Picture Galleries of London (1842); essays,
incl. The House of Titian (1846), Sacred and Legendary Art
(1848-52); friend of Ottilie von Goethe and Lady Byron; attention to sick
nursing. Note also Denis Brownell Murphy, d.1842; miniaturist, settled
in London, commanded by Princess Charlotte to copy in miniature Lely’s
‘Beauties’, purchased by Sir Gerard Noel and published as Beauties
of the Court of King Charles II (1833). Oxford Guide to Literary England
cites Legends of the Madonna; The House of Titian.
A. A. Kelly, ed., Wandering Women, Two Centuries of Travel Out of Ireland (Dublin: Wolfhound 1995), incl. account of Anna Brownell Jameson, who was adopted as member of Red Indian Chippewas and wrote of her adventures with them.
Irish Literature, Justin McCarthy, ed., (Washington: University of America 1904); contains an extract from Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, being the story of Genevieve de Sorbigny, involved in a marriage of convenience to the Marquis of —; includes account of Bretagne [Brittany] with description: ‘The people who inhabited the country round were a ferocious, half-civilised race, and, in general, desperate smugglers and pirates. They had been driven to this mode of life by a dreadful famine and the oppressions of the provincial tax-gatherers, and had pursued it partly from choice and partly from necessity. They had carried on for neear hald a cnetury a constant and systematic warfare against the legal authorities of the province, in which thye were generally victorious.’ Her feelings for her husband include joy at his safety, and heart-break at his destruction at the hands of mutineers. The period is pre-Revolutionary, since the infant in the story lives to be a victim of the Revolution.
Also dg. of United Irishman miniaturist and English mother; a few poems
(see AA Kelly, Pillar of the House, 1988, in which Ennuyée is called A Lady’s Diary (1826).
James Joyce held a copy of Shakespeare’s Heroines (London: Dent 1910) in his Library in Trieste. (See Richard Ellmann, The Consciousness of James Joyce, Faber, p.114 [Appendix].)
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)