Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/222

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Dictionary of English Literature

reputation; but his books had considerable immediate popularity. Among them are Richelieu (1829), Philip Augustus (1831), The Man at Arms (1840), The Huguenot (1838), The Robber, Henry of Guise (1839), Agincourt (1844), The King's Highway (1840). In addition to his novels he wrote Memoirs of Great Commanders, a Life of the Black Prince, and other historical and biographical works. He held the honorary office of Historiographer Royal.


Jameson, Mrs. Anna Brownell (Murphy) (1794-1860).—Writer on art, dau. of Denis B.M., a distinguished miniature painter, m. Robert Jameson, a barrister (afterwards Attorney-General of Ontario). The union, however, did not turn out happily: a separation took place, and Mrs. J. turned her attention to literature, and specially to subjects connected with art. Among many other works she produced Loves of the Poets (1829), Celebrated Female Sovereigns (1831), Beauties of the Court of Charles II. (1833), Rubens (translated from the German), Hand Book to the Galleries of Art, Early Italian Painters, Sacred and Legendary Art (1848), etc. Her works show knowledge and discrimination and, though now in many respects superseded, still retain interest and value.


Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse (1841-1905).—B. at Dundee, and ed. at St. Columba's Coll., Dublin, Charterhouse, and Camb., at the last of which he lectured on the classics, and was in 1869 elected Public Orator. After being Prof. of Greek at Glasgow, he held from 1889 the corresponding chair at Camb., and for a time represented the Univ. in Parliament. He was one of the founders of the British School of Archæology at Athens. Among his works are The Attic Orators, An Introduction to Homer, Lectures on Greek Poetry, Life of Richard Bentley (English Men of Letters Series), and he ed. the works of Sophocles, and the Poems and Fragments of Bacchylides, discovered in 1896. J. was one of the most brilliant of modern scholars.


Jefferies, Richard (1848-1887).—Naturalist and novelist, s. of a farmer, was b. at Swindon, Wilts. He began his literary career on the staff of a local newspaper, and first attracted attention by a letter in the Times on the Wiltshire labourer. Thereafter he wrote for the Pall Mall Gazette, in which appeared his Gamekeeper at Home, and Wild Life in a Southern County (1879), both afterwards repub. Both these works are full of minute observation and vivid description of country life. They were followed by The Amateur Poacher (1880), Wood Magic (1881), Round about a Great Estate (1881), The Open Air (1885), and others on similar subjects. Among his novels are Bevis, in which he draws on his own childish memories, and After London, or Wild England (1885), a romance of the future, when London has ceased to exist. The Story of My Heart (1883) is an idealised picture of his inner life. J. d. after a painful illness, which lasted for six years. In his own line, that of depicting with an intense sense for nature all the elements of country and wild life, vegetable and animal, surviving in the face of modern civilisation, he has had few equals. Life by E. Thomas.