Frances Jacson

Frances Margaretta Jacson (born 13 October 1754 at Bebington, Cheshire, died 17 June 1842 at Somersal Herbert, Derbyshire) was an English novelist whose work shows a strong moral purpose.

Frances Jacson was one of five surviving children of the Anglican rector of Bebington, Rev. Simon Jacson (1728–1808), and his wife Anne Fitzherbert (c.1729–1795), daughter of Richard Fitzherbert of Somersal Herbert. Her elder brother Roger succeeded his father as rector, after which the family moved to and then Tarporley, Cheshire, where her father became rector. She and her sister Maria Elizabetha Jacson (1755–1829) remained single, and looked after their father after he was widowed in 1795.

While they were at Tarporley, the family became worried about Frances's other brother Shallcross (d. 1821), also an ordained priest, who had taken to drink and horse-racing. The need to pay off his debts was the spur for the sisters to turn to writing. Frances completed two successful novels. On their father's death in 1808, they had to find a new home and accepted an offer made by their cousin Lord St Helens to lend them Somersal Hall for life. Shallcross's problems resurfaced, with debts totalling £1760. Francis paid these off with her earnings from two further novels and with help from Roger and Maria.

She was desolated by the death of her sister in 1829, but eventually resumed her social life among the county gentry and her extended family. Her favourite nephew Henry Gally Knight (a Tory) kept her in touch with politics, in which she was a firm Whig and supporter of parliamentary reform. She also remained a firm Christian.

Jacson's first novel, Plain Sense (1795; second e.: London: William Lane at the Minerva Press, 1796; third e. 1799) was immediately popular and followed by a second, Disobedience (London: William Lane at the Minerva Press, 1797). These and her subsequent novels appeared anonymously.

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