Communion of Labour, The.
[Labor]. Jameson, Mrs. [Anna Brownell]. The Communion of Labour: a second lecture on the social employments of women. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1856.
12mo.; brown endpapers; full calf; tips bumped; green leather title label affixed to spine; stamped in gilt and blind.
First edition of this lecture, inspired by Jameson’s friendship with and patronage of feminists Barbara Bodichon and Bessie Rayner Parkes. Jameson’s first lecture on women’s labor rights was titled, Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant, at Home and Abroad; it was delivered on June 28, 1855, and published later that same year. “Almost all of [Jameson’s] work was about women and, she claimed, designed for women readers and although she was never a feminist, her writing nevertheless developed a feminist polemic” (,“Jameson, Anna Brownell (1794–1860),” by Judith Johnston. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004). She did not believe in strict equality between the sexes, but she supported younger feminists and was keen on improving women’s educational opportunities.
In eleven chapters, with titles including, “The Influence off Legislation on the Morals and Happiness of Men and Women,” “Education and Training of Women for Social Employments,” and “Working for Hire and Working for Love.” All of these chapters focus on the realization that “a demand has not only been created, but becomes everyday increasingly urgent, for a supply of working women at once more efficient and more effective” (p. 151).
In her Preface to the book, Jameson explained that her Sisters of Charity lecture was too lengthy to deliver in one reading, so she divided it into two separate lectures; she considers this second lecture to be “supplementary” to the former one, though both lectures aim to prove “that a more equal distribution of work which has to be done, and a more perfect communion of interests in the work which is done, are, in the present state of society, imperatively demanded” (pp. v-vi).
In the “Influence of Legislation” chapter, Jameson points out that “a law which should forbid women to give all she has to give to the man she loves and trusts, though to her own perdition, would be certainly a very foolish and a very useless law” (p. 7). She champions a law which would allow a woman “independent administration of her property” (p. 8).
She also supports women’s education, and provides evidence of the success of co-education. Jameson says women’s learning “is even more important, inasmuch as women being the mothers of the human race a very large portion of their mental and moral organization must pass into that of their offspring” (p. 110), and “the complete separation of boys and girls in their early education, while yet children, is a great mistake, and a source of infinite unhappiness and immorality” (p. 116).
Jameson wrote several books, dabbling in various genres in addition to women’s rights, like Shakespeare criticism – Gerard Manley Hopkins placed her in the same category as Coleridge, Shlegel and Charles Lamb in this capacity – art criticism, and travel writing. Titles include Diary of an Ennuyée (1826), The Loves of the Poets (1829), Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns (1831), Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad (1834), Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838), the two-volume Sacred and Legendary Art (1848), Legends of the Monastic Orders (1850), Legends of the Madonna (1852) and the posthumously published The History of Our Lord (1864).
Jameson (1794-1860) was born in Dublin to an Irish miniature artist named Denis Brownell Murphy and his English wife, Johanna. She had four younger sisters; all of the Murphy girls were educated by a governess, until Anna was eleven years old and began teaching her sisters herself. She started work as a governess when she was sixteen, and for the next fifteen years worked for three families in
Print Inquire
