Maria Jacson
| Maria Elizabetha Jacson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1755 Bebington, Cheshire, England |
| Died | 10 October 1829 (aged 53–54) Chelford, Cheshire, England |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Writer, botanist |
| Known for | Botanical writings (Linnaean) |
| Notable work | Botanical Lectures By A Lady |
| Home town | Somersal Herbert, Derbyshire |
| Parent(s) | Rev. Simon Jacson, Anne Fitzherbert |
| Relatives | Frances Jacson (sister) |
Maria Elizabetha Jacson (1755 – 10 October 1829) was an eighteenth-century English writer, as was her sister, Frances Jacson (1754–1842), known for her books on botany at a time when there were significant obstacles to women's authorship. In some sources her name appears as Maria Jackson, Mary Jackson or Mary Elizabeth Jackson. She spent most of her life in Cheshire and Derbyshire, where she lived with her sister following her father's death.
Social conventions of the time obliged her to publish anonymously. She was influenced by Erasmus Darwin at a time when the new but controversial sexual classification of plants proposed by Linnaeus was becoming known in England. She published four books on the topic.
Maria and Frances were two of five surviving children of the Anglican rector of Bebington, Cheshire, the Rev. Simon Jacson (1728–1808), and his wife Anne Fitzherbert (c. 1729 – 1795), the oldest daughter of Richard Fitzherbert of Somersal Herbert in Derbyshire. The family had been landowners and clergy in both Cheshire and Derbyshire since the early seventeenth century. Their elder brother Roger (1753–1826) succeeded his father as rector in 1771, after which the family moved to (1777–87), Cheshire and then Tarporley in the same county, where her father became rector. Although their sister, Anne (d. 1805) married, both Maria and Frances remained single, and looked after their father after he was widowed in 1795 and suffered from failing health till his death in 1808.
While they were at Tarporley, the family became worried about their other brother Shallcross (died 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. On their father's death in 1808, they had to find a new home and accepted an offer made by their Fitzherbert cousin, Lord St Helens (1753 – 1839) to lend them Somersal Hall, a partly Tudor home in Somersal Herbert, Derbyshire for life. The Hall was the ancestral home of the Fitzherberts and when Frances Fitzherbert died (1806), the inheritance passed to her nephew Roger Jacson, who sold it, but was then repurchased by Lord St Helens, descendent of a different line of Fitzherberts. 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. Shallcross died in 1821. The Jacson children were cousins to Sir Brooke Boothby, at nearby Ashbourne and a member of the Lichfield Botanical Society which brought them into contact with Enlightenment culture through Erasmus Darwin and other contemporary writers on science, as well as the literary circle of Anna Seward at Lichfield, Staffordshire.
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