Jane C. Loudon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jane C. Loudon

Jane C. Webb Loudon (born August 19, 1807 in Edgbaston near Birmingham , † July 13, 1858 in London ) was an English writer, horticulturalist and plant painter .

She was the author of the first novel in which an Egyptian mummy appears from the dead . Since the novel "The Mummy !: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century" is set in the 22nd century, she is both the founder of the mummy curse genre and, alongside Mary Shelley, one of the earliest writers of science fiction . During her lifetime she was best known as the author of books on horticulture . Your botanical author abbreviation is " JWLoudon ".

Life

youth

Jane Webb was the daughter of Thomas Webb, a gentleman based near Birmingham. Her mother died when she was 12 years old. Then she went to the continent with her father for a year, where she learned several languages. Due to bad speculation, the family became impoverished and Jane had to take care of the household. The property, Kitwell House in Bartley Green in Edgbaston, stood on the site of what is now the King Edward VI Five Ways School, Birmingham. It was 7 miles outside of town at the time and had 30 acres of land, three fish ponds, and a kitchen garden. Although she later put it differently, Jane Webb will not have been entirely unfamiliar with the basics of agriculture and horticulture since then.

"The Mummy!"

After her father's death in 1824, she found herself in precarious financial circumstances and decided to use her early writing talent to make money. The novel "The Mummy!", Published anonymously in three volumes in 1827, was probably stimulated on the one hand by the enthusiasm for Egypt that still had an impact after Napoleon's Egyptian expedition , then the macabre public mummy wraps, such as those that took place in Piccadilly in London in 1821 and finally the one that appeared in 1823 Mary Shelley's novel " Frankenstein " . Unlike in the Frankenstein novel, where the creature is a monster, the Pharaoh Cheops, raised from the dead with the help of a galvanic battery, does not become a monster, but willingly shares the wisdom of millennia with the political circles in England in the 22nd century, where one absolute monarch named Claudia rules a Catholic kingdom.

Marriage and horticulture

John Claudius Loudon

Through the novel, in February 1830, she also met her future husband, the Scottish botanist and landscape architect John Claudius Loudon . He had read the book in 1830 and was particularly interested in the futuristic agricultural implements that were described there. He tried to get to know the author, which soon led to an engagement. The two married on September 14, 1830. In 1832 a daughter was born, Agnes, who later published some books for young people. The couple lived in a suburban garden villa at 3 Porchester Terrace, Bayswater , London.

Jane began to take an interest in her husband's field of work and found that there was no horticultural literature written for lay use. She wrote:

It is so difficult for men, whose knowledge grew with them and strengthened as they grew stronger, to imagine the state of utter ignorance in which a beginner finds himself for whom even the elementary works are something like the ancient Eton- written in Latin. Grammar are.

Loudon therefore wrote a number of books for the horticultural lady in the following years, which were considered standard works. Her first work of this kind, the "Gardening for Ladies" published in 1840, was a great success and sold over 20,000 copies. In the meantime she had also trained as a plant painter and illustrated her works herself. Her illustrations of plants are valued and reprinted to this day.

Last years

After the death of her husband in 1843, Jane Loudon again had to rely on writing to make a living, especially since she now had to look after her daughter. Before that, the Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum , an elaborate book project by her husband, had drained all of the family's resources and left a debt of £ 10,000. The situation deteriorated again in 1851 after she was forced to resign as editor of The Ladies' Companion at Home and Abroad . A small pension of £ 100 a year allowed her a modest livelihood. In 1858 she died at the age of 50 in her home at 3 Porchester Terrace, London.

  • Loudon - Plain Instructions in Gardening - p. 67.jpg
  • Loudon - British Wild Flowers - pl. 13.jpg
  • Loudon - The Ladies' Flower-Garden of Ornamental Annuals - pl. 12.jpg
  • Loudon - The Ladies' Flower-Garden of Ornamental Annuals - pl. 25.jpg
  • Loudon - The Ladies' Flower-Garden of Ornamental Annuals - pl. 9.jpg

Works

  • Prose and Verse (1824)
  • The Mummy !: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (3 vols., 1827, 2nd ed. 1828)
  • Stories of a Bride (3 vols., 1829)
  • Conversations upon Comparative Chronology and General History from the Creation of the World to the Birth of Christ (1830)
  • Young Ladies Book of Botany (1838)
  • Agnes; or the little girl who could keep her promise ... (1839)
  • Instructions in Gardening for Ladies (1840)
  • The Young Naturalist's Journey (1840)
  • Botany for Ladies (1842)
  • The Ladies Magazine of Gardening (1842)
  • The year-book of natural history (1842)
  • The Ladies Companion to the Flower Garden (4 vols., 1840–44)
  • Glimpses of nature and objects of interest described during a visit to the Isle of Wight (1844)
  • The Ladys Country Companion or How To Enjoy a Country Life Rationally (1845)
  • Facts from the World of Nature, animate and inanimate. (1848)
  • Domestic pets: their habits and management (1851)
  • My Own Garden (1855)

literature

  • HG Adams: Cyclopaedia of Female Biography. London, 1857, p. 471f, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dacyclopdiafemal00cyclgoog~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn486~ double-sided%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D
  • Priscilla Boniface (Ed.): In search of English gardens: the travels of John Claudius Loudon and his wife Jane. Century Hutchinson, London a. a. 1990, ISBN 0-7126-3731-1
  • Lisa Hopkins: Jane C. Loudon's The Mummy !: Mary Shelley Meets George Orwell, and They Go in a Balloon to Egypt. In: Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text 10 (June 2003), Online
  • Bea Howe: Lady with Green Fingers: The Life of Jane Loudon. Country Life, London 1961
  • Jane Loudon: A short account of the life and writings of John Claudius Loudon. In: J. Gloag: Mister Loudon's England. The life and work of John Claudius Loudon, and his influence on architecture and furniture design. Oriel Press, Newcastle upon Tyne 1970
  • Ann B. Shteir: Loudon, Jane (1807-1858). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2004, Online, Subscription
  • Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie : Women in science: antiquity through the nineteenth century: a biographical dictionary with annotated bibliography . 3. Edition. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1991, ISBN 0-262-65038-X , p. 123

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 52 ° 25 '52.4 "  N , 2 ° 0' 4"  W . See also Kitwell - A History of BIRMINGHAM Places & Placenames
  2. ^ Heath Schenker: Women, Gardens and the English Middle Class in the Early Nineteenth Century. In: Michel Conan (ed.): Bourgeois and aristocratic cultural encounters in garden art, 1550-1850. Dumbarton Oaks 2002, pp. 349f
  3. ↑ Botany for Ladies , 1842, p. Vi
  4. ↑ Example: Jane Loudon, Elizabeth Banks (inlet): Ornamental flowers. Studio Editions, London 1991. German edition: Ornamental flowers. Swan, Zug / Switzerland 1991
personal data
SURNAME Loudon, Jane C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Webb, Jane (maiden name); Loudon, Jane; Webb Loudon, Jane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English writer, horticulturalist and plant painter
DATE OF BIRTH August 19, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH Edgbaston
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1858
Place of death London