Jane Wells Webb Loudon

Jane Loudon ( Webb; 19 August 1800 – 13 July 1858), also known as Jane C. Loudon, or Mrs. Loudon in her publications, was an English writer 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. She was married to the well-known horticulturalist John Claudius Loudon, and they wrote some books together, as well as her own very successful series. Loudon is famous for her gothic novel The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century.

Early life Jane Webb's year of birth is unclear. Most sources give it as 1807, but the Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-2003 gives her age at death as 57, which supports her birth date as 1800. She was born to Thomas Webb, an eminent lawyer from Edgbaston, Birmingham and his wife. (Sources vary on her place of birth: according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), she was born at Ritwell House, which is possibly the same as Kitwell House at Bartley Green). 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 seventeen.

She would come to have three major, and contrasting, intellectual achievements. She explored cultures and gained familiarity in several languages, which would benefit her later on in her travels. At age 27 she would publish the first fictional book about mummies, which introduced a new genre to fiction. Finally, after her marriage to horticulturist and landscape designer, John Loudon, she changed to botanical writing. Jane became responsible for introducing gardening to middle-class society through her easy to understand gardening manuals. She was a pioneer as a woman to make botanical information accessible to those outside the field, and to further her ideas and her output in society, she became a self-taught botanical artist.

Works of fiction: The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century

After the death of her father, Loudon began to support herself by writing. Her first publication was a book of poetry, Prose and Verse, that was published in 1824. Her final works of fiction were Stories of a Bride, published in 1829 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 some later in the 19th century. Stories of a Bride (1829) Conversations on Chronology (1830)

Works of fact: Gardening, horticulture and botany After marriage to John Loudon in 1830, a Scottish botanist, garden designer and author, she re-focused her writing skills onto supporting his works and also writing her own books and periodicals. She had no previous experience in this area and commented, “It is scarcely possible to imagine any person more completely ignorant of everything relating to botany than I was at the period of my marriage with Mr Loudon.” She took on an assistant role to her much older husband. She planted and maintained the gardens at their home in London, and cared for the plants meticulously in order for him to be able to do his research. With her own writing experience, she assisted him in editing his publications, in particular his extensive Encyclopedia of Gardening (1834).

They travelled together in England and Scotland the 1830s and early 1840s as he advised on gardens, estate design and obtained for plant material for his books and periodicals. She also attended public lectures in London by John Lindley to improve her knowledge and provide material.

Personal life

John Claudius Loudon wrote a favourable review of The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century in The Gardener's Magazine, the first British periodical devoted to horticulture which he had founded and edited. Seeking out the author, whom he presumed to be male, he eventually met Jane Webb in February 1830:

They married on 14 September 1830. who became an author of children's books. Their circle of friends included Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. She was given an award from Royal Literary Fund in 1844 and received a "deservedly gained" pension of £100 a year from the Civil List from 1846 onwards.

A blue plaque jointly commemorating the Loudons was erected at their former home, 3 Porchester Terrace, Bayswater in 1953, by London County Council.