Mary Ann Jackson

Mary Ann Jackson (1819–1915) was an English botanical illustrator, known only for two publications, now rare, copies of which are in various notable collections.

Early life

Jackson was born in 1819 in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England, to Ellen Sarah, formerly Benson and the Rev. Stephen Jackson, who was curate-in-charge at St Giles' Church, Sheldon, Warwickshire (now Birmingham). Her father died when she was nine, and she subsequently spent time at the Birmingham home of her maternal half brother, Edward White Benson (1802–1843), a fellow of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, and his family, including his young son and namesake, Edward White Benson (1829-1896), who was later Archbishop of Canterbury. Benson wrote:

In 1840, crediting her only as "Miss Jackson", Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans published The Pictorial Flora; or British Botany Delineated, a book comprising 131 plates with over 1,500 illustrations of native British flowering plants. Jackson created the lithographs herself. In a preface which she dated "Lichfield, March 1, 1839" she explained that the work was intended to serve as illustrations for floras by James Edward Smith, William Jackson Hooker, John Lindley and William Withering, and that the pages of her work had been sized so as to allow them to be cut and bound into those works. They had one child, Charles Herbert Chavasse, in 1846. The work was unusual in having pasted-in examples of pressed botanical specimens.