The Diary of an Ennuyée

Anna Brownell Jameson was a British writer. In 1829, she made her name when the “Loves of the Poets” was published. The book attracted a poem by Mrs. Cornwell Baron Wilson in tribute. The first work which displayed her powers of original thought was her Characteristics of Women (1832). These analyses of William Shakespeare’s heroines are remarkable for their delicacy of critical insight and fineness of literary touch. They are the result of a penetrating, essentially feminine mind, applied to the study of individuals of its own sex, detecting characteristics and defining differences not perceived by the ordinary critic and entirely overlooked by the general reader.