Julia Stephen

Julia Stephen
Born 7 February 1846
Calcutta
Died 1895
Cause of death Influenza
Other names Julia Jackson and Julia Duckworth
Spouse(s) Leslie Stephen

Julia Stephen (1846 – 1895) was an English philanthropist and a Pre-Raphaelite model. She was the wife of the biographer Leslie Stephen and mother of several members of the Bloomsbury Group including Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.

Life

Stephen was born in Calcutta in 1846. She was the daughter of Maria and Dr John Jackson.[1]

Julia Jackson by Edward Burne-Jones, 1866
Julia Duckworth by Julia Margaret Cameron, 1872

Amongst her mother's seven siblings was her aunt, Julia Margaret Pattle, better known as the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron who had introduced the two families. Julia was also first cousin to the temperance leader Lady Henry Somerset. After returning to England she became a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones.[2] In 1867 she married Herbert Duckworth (1833 − 1870) by whom she had three children (George b.1868, Stella b.1869 and Gerald b.1870) prior to his death in 1870.

She became the second wife of the biographer Leslie Stephen on 26 March 1878. They had four children:

She was not in favour of women having the vote. She believed that women had their own role and their own role models. She referred her daughters to Florence Nightingale, Octavia Hill and the novelist "Mrs Humfry Ward".[1]

In May 1895, Julia died of influenza, leaving her husband with four young children aged 11 to 15 (her children by her first marriage being adult by then).[3]

Works (incomplete)

References

  1. 1 2 Jane Garnett, ‘Stephen , Julia Prinsep (1846–1895)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 6 May 2017
  2. ↑ Smith College libraries biography of Julia Prinsep Stephen
  3. ↑ Gérin 1981, p. 178.

Bibliography

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