Geraldine Jewsbury

Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury was an English novelist, book reviewer and literary figure in London, best known for popular novels such as Zoe: the History of Two Lives and reviews for the literary periodical the Athenaeum. Jewsbury never married, but enjoyed intimate friendships, notably with Jane Carlyle, wife of the essayist Thomas Carlyle. Jewsbury's romantic feelings for her and the complexity of their relations appear in Jewsbury's writings. She tried unsuccessfully to encourage her close friend Walter Mantell to start a new life as an author after his disagreement with the New Zealand government over Maori land rights.

Jewsbury was born at Measham, Derbyshire (since 1897 Leicestershire), the daughter of Thomas Jewsbury (died 1840), a cotton manufacturer and merchant, and his wife Maria, née Smith, (died 1819). Her paternal grandfather, Thomas Jewsbury Sr (died 1799), had been a surveyor of roads, an engineer of canals and a philosophy student. In his will, he left the family four cottages, a warehouse, some land in Measham, and a large cash bequest.

Thomas Jr and Maria had six children: Maria Jane (1800), Thomas (1802), Henry (1803), Geraldine (1812), Arthur (1815) and Frank (1819). Maria Jane had literary interests and wrote for the Manchester Gazette. After their mother's early death, she helped to bring up the family until she married, but she herself died young of cholera. Geraldine then took care of her father until he died, and also of Frank until he married.

Her father's cotton business suffered from the War of 1812, and he became an insurance agent based in Manchester. Geraldine was educated at a boarding school kept by the Misses Darbys at Alder Mills near Tamworth, Staffordshire, and continued her studies in French, Italian and drawing in London in 1830–1831. Soon after returning to her family home, she began to suffer from depression, question her fate and express religious doubts. This change was reflected in her first novel, Zoe: the History of Two Lives.

Jewsbury moved to Sevenoaks, Kent, after the death of Jane Carlyle in 1866. She herself contracted cancer in 1879, died in a private London hospital in 1880, and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. She was writing until the end of her life, her last report for Bentley being dated 9 September 1880. She left all her papers to the businessman and feminist John Stores Smith, with whom she had had a strong relationship.