Maria Jane Jewsbury, or M. J. J., as she often signed her literary texts, was an important and respected writer in the 1820s and 1830s. The author of four full-length books as well as more than seventy contributions to literary annuals and at least fifty-one review articles in the well-established weekly journal The Athenaeum, she was regarded by both her readers and her friends as greatly gifted. Her early death at age thirty-three was seen as a tragic curtailment of what promised to be an increasingly successful literary career.

The scope of Jewsbury's works is impressive. She began publishing poetry in newspapers and journals while she was still in her teens; at age twenty-four she brought out a two-volume work that included not only poems but also serious essays and satirical sketches; three years later she published a book of religious advice for young people; and her final...