Jane C. Loudon


Jane Wells Webb Loudon was an English author and early pioneer of science fiction. She wrote before the term was coined, and was discussed for a century as a writer of Gothic fiction, fantasy or horror. She also created the first popular gardening manuals, as opposed to specialist horticultural works, reframing the art of gardening as fit for young women. Furthermore, she contributed to the work of her husband, John Claudius Loudon.

Early life

Jane Webb was born in 1807 to Thomas Webb, a wealthy manufacturer from Edgbaston, Birmingham and his wife. After the death of her mother in 1819, she travelled in Europe for a year with her father, learning several languages. On their return, his business faltered and his fortune was lost to excessive speculation. He sold the house in Edgbaston and moved to another of his properties, Kitwell House at Bartley Green, six miles away. He died penniless in 1824, when Jane Webb was only 17.

Biography

After her father's death, she found that "on the winding up of his affairs that it would be necessary to do something for my support. I had written a strange, wild novel, called the Mummy, in which I had laid the scene in the twenty-second century, and attempted to predict the state of improvement to which this country might possibly arrive.
She may have drawn inspiration from the general fashion for anything Pharaonic, inspired by the French researches during the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt; the 1821 public unwrappings of Egyptian mummies in a theatre near Piccadilly, which she may have attended as a girl, and very likely, the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. As Shelley had written of Frankenstein's creation, "A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch," which may have triggered young Miss Webb's later concept. In any case, at many points she deals in greater clarity with elements from the earlier book: the loathing for the much-desired object, the immediate arrest for crime and attempt to lie one's way out of it, etc. However, unlike the Frankenstein monster, the hideous revived Cheops is not shuffling around dealing out horror and death, but giving canny advice on politics and life to those who befriend him. In some ways The Mummy! may be seen as her reaction to themes in Frankenstein: her mummy specifically says he is allowed life only by divine favour, rather than being indisputably vivified only by mortal science, and so on, as Hopkins' 2003 essay covers in detail.
Unlike many early science fiction works Loudon did not portray the future as her own day with mere political changes. She filled her world with foreseeable changes in technology, society, and even fashion. Her court ladies wear trousers and hair ornaments of controlled flame. Surgeons and lawyers may be steam-powered automatons. A kind of Internet is predicted in it. Besides trying to account for the revivification of the mummy in scientific terms – galvanic shock rather than incantations – "she embodied ideas of scientific progress and discovery, that now read like prophecies" to those later down the 1800s. Her social attitudes have resulted in the book being ranked among proto-feminist novels.
Jane as a young girl had to start earning money to help her family. At only twelve her mother died and Jane started writing to financial help her family. Jane was a prolific writer and a strong willed woman. Her first job was for Prose and Verse and her second was for a science fiction novel. Since the time her work was submitted anonymously because she was a woman.
At age seventeen her father pasted away. She had many financial challenges form the death of her father. In 1827 she started to write a science fiction novel. This novel was a success. After her success on that novel she began a career on writing about horticulture. Horticulture is the study and practice of garden cultivation and management.
John Claudius Loudon, her future husband, was intrigued by her work and he was even more intrigued to find out the work was of a woman. He met Jane in 1830, by 1830 Jane had also written Stories of a Bride and later she would write Conversations on Chronology. Stories of a Bride was written in 1829 and Conversations of Chronology was written in 1830. They were very taken with each other and were married only seven months later. The two of them worked very closely together the rest of their lives.
The two lived in London and had a small garden with an impressive collection of plants. Later Jane started her study of botany, which is the study of plants and their physiology, structure, genetics, ecology, distribution, classification, and economic importance. Jane followed and attended lectures of famous botanists. One of which was John Lindley. Jane wrote her notes about the lectures as if they were articles. Jane often traveled with her husband acting as his secretary for his trips. Jane would help him with his records and books. Later in their marriage they fell on an enormous amount of debt. This caused Jane to break out her writing skills once again to help financially.
Later in the 1830s Jane wrote Young Lady’s Book of Botany and Agnes or the Little Girl who Kept a Promise. Jane was focused on gardening and wrote a novel about gardening, Instructions in Gardening for Ladies. Jane also wrote Ladies’ Flowering Garden and Travels of Agnes Merton and Her Mama. These novels were highly successful and many amateur female gardeners took a liking to Jane’s writing. Many of her writings went through several volumes. More volumes include The Ladies' Flower-Garden of Ornamental Bulbous Plants in 1841, The First Book of Botany … for Schools and Young Persons in 1841, Lady's Companion to the Flower Garden. Being an Alphabetical Arrangement of all the Ornamental Plants Usually Grown in Gardens and Shrubberies in 1841 and Botany for Ladies, or, a Popular Introduction to the Natural System of Plants in 1842. Jane was able to help with her work for their financial problems.
In 1832 Jane and John had their daughter Agnes. In 1842 John Loudon died and struggling financially, Jane continued to write gardening books assisted by Agnes. Jane also successfully published several of her husband’s work posthumously.
In 1844, Jane received an award from the Royal Literary Fund. This was a charity in the UK to help struggling authors, and established in the 1790s as a way to give grants and pensions to writers with financial problems. Jane had received a pension from the award in 1846 and with this support, allowed Jane to continue writing.
was published anonymously in 1827 by Henry Colburn as a three-volume novel, as was usual in that day, so that each small volume could be carried around easily. It drew many favourable reviews, including one in 1829 in her future husband's The Gardener's Magazine on the inventions it proposed.

Marriage

wrote a favourable review of The Mummy in a journal he edited. Seeking out the author of the text, whom he presumed to be male, he eventually met Jane in 1830 and they married a year later.
In 1830 when John was forty-seven he asked a friend to invite the author of this fascinating novel to a lunch. The novel was The Mummy and the author was Jane Wells. He had recently put a good review out in the Gardeners Magazine. John, like Jane loved the fantastical and the unknown. John loved the way Jane captured her passion in writing. The marriage of the two was a symbol of their admiration for each other and their minds. The two hard creative minds when working together could create wonderful writings.
They had a daughter, Agnes Loudon, who became an author of children's books. Their circle of friends included Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray.
In 1829, Loudon published the semi-fictional Stories of a Bride, her second and last foray in fiction. Instead, she shifted her focus to making gardening an acceptable hobby for young women.

Horticultural work

The Loudons were considered the leading horticulturalists of their day.
She had found the gardening manuals of the day inaccessible, as they were written for those already deeply into the field, rather than those seeking new information. Loudon noticed there were no entry-level manuals, for which she saw a need and potential interest. She set to writing them as she herself learned: Instructions in Gardening for Ladies; The Ladies' Flower Garden; The Ladies' Companion to the Flower Garden; Botany for Ladies; The Lady's Magazine of Gardening, etc. According to Adams, these became "standard books of reference, and attained a large circulation." She was not only influenced by her husband in gardening, but by John Lindley, whose lectures she attended; she ardently applied her studies and redirected her energy to making gardening an accessible pastime for women, who were often excluded from planting practices.

Later life

John Loudon died of lung cancer in 1843, leaving Jane to raise their 10-year-old daughter Agnes. While earning a living by writing, she received a "deservedly gained" pension of £100 a year from the Civil List.
In late 1849 Loudon began editing The Ladies' Companion at Home and Abroad, a new magazine for women. Successful at first, its sales fell and she resigned. Jane Wells Loudon died at age fifty in her bed at home on the fifteenth of July in 1858. She was with her daughter who buried her in the Kensal Green Cemetery which is in Kensal Green London.

Works