In a long, nineteenth-century writing career Anna Jameson established a durable reputation in three fields: art history, feminism, and travel writing. She is recognized as a pioneer art historian for her Sacred and Legendary Art (1848). Her various writings on women, particularly Characteristics Of Women (1832), her public lectures in 1855 and 1856 on working opportunities for women, and her influence as adviser and mentor on a group of influential early feminists assure her a place in the history of the women's movement in England. Her Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838), written after a nine-month stay in 1836-1837, has remained a classic in Canada.

Born in Ireland in 1794, Anna Murphy (later Jameson) took up her first post as governess, to the four small sons of the marquis of Winchester, in 1810 when she was sixteen. In 1819 she began an engagement with the Rowles family that first opened up the possibilities of...