Julia stephen biography

Pity has no creed. We are bound to these sufferers by the tie of sisterhood and while life lasts we will help, soothe, and, if we can, love them. Women are not all blind followers of men. They have power to think as well, and they will not weaken their power of helping and loving by fearlessly owning their ignorance when they should be convinced of it. Women should not reject religion merely because they desire to please men. Man and woman have equal rights but with different areas of influence. Women do not stand on the same ground as men with regard to work, though we are far from allowing that our work is lower or less important than theirs, but we ought and do claim the same equality of morals. [1]

When aunt Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) took an albumen print of her ‘favourite niece’, Mrs Herbert Duckworth, the year was 1867 and Mrs Duckworth had been married for less than a year. She was born Julia Jackson, and her image would go down in the annals of history as one of the great beauties, but little is known of this mysterious woman. An image captured in a moment by a family member would launch infinite mystery and curiosity.

She was born Julia Prinsep Jackson on 7 February 1846 in  Calcutta, India, the daughter of Dr. John Jackson and Maria Theodosia Pattle, youngest sister of Julia Margaret Cameron. The Prinsep name enters the frame when another aunt, Sarah Pattle, married Henry Thoby Prinsep (1792-1878). She became cousin to their son Valentine Cameron Prinsep. Julia and her mother – known as ‘Mia’ -stayed with Sarah and Thoby Prinsep from 1848 until Dr. Jackson returned to England in 1855. The matriarch of the family moved them into Brent Lodge, Hendon, while Julia was educated at home, becoming her mother’s nurse and companion. The Jacksons lived at Brent Lodge for ten years and the story goes that a young, 21 year-old beauty, Julia Jackson, paid a visit to her cousins at Little Holland House where she met a 34 year-old barr

Philanthropist and model, mother of Virginia Woolf

Julia Prinsep Stephen (néeJackson; formerly Duckworth; 7 February 1846 – 5 May 1895) was an English Pre-Raphaelitemodel and philanthropist. She was the wife of the biographer Leslie Stephen and mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, members of the Bloomsbury Group.

Julia Prinsep Jackson was born in Calcutta to an Anglo-Indian family, and when she was two her mother and her two sisters moved back to England. She became the favourite model of her aunt, the celebrated photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, who made more than 50 portraits of her. Through another maternal aunt, she became a frequent visitor at Little Holland House, then home to an important literary and artistic circle, and came to the attention of a number of Pre-Raphaelite painters who portrayed her in their work.

Married to Herbert Duckworth, a barrister, in 1867 she was soon widowed with three infant children. Devastated, she turned to nursing, philanthropy and agnosticism, and found herself attracted to the writing and life of Leslie Stephen, with whom she shared a friend in Anny Thackeray, his sister-in-law.

After Leslie Stephen's wife died in 1875 he became close friends with Julia and they married in 1878. Julia and Leslie Stephen had four further children, living at 22 Hyde Park Gate, South Kensington, together with his seven-year-old mentally disabled daughter, Laura Makepeace Stephen. Many of her seven children and their descendants became notable. In addition to her family duties and modelling, she wrote a book based on her nursing experiences, Notes from Sick Rooms, in 1883.

She also wrote children's stories for her family, eventually published posthumously as Stories for Children and became involved in social justice advocacy. Julia Stephen had firm views on the role of women, namely that their work was of equal value to that of men, but in different spheres, and she opposed the suffrage movement for