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Anna Brassey

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The Right Honourable
The Lady Brassey
Anna Brassey[1]
Born
Anna Allnutt

7 October 1839
London, England
Died14 September 1887(1887-09-14) (aged 47)
En route to Mauritius
Resting placeBuried at sea
NationalityBritish
Other namesAnnie Allnutt
Known forTravel writing
TitleBaroness Brassey
Spouse
​
(m. 1860)​
Children
Parent(s)Mr and Mrs John Allnutt

Anna Brassey, Baroness Brassey (née Allnutt; 7 October 1839 – 14 September 1887)[2] was an English traveller and writer. Her bestselling book A Voyage in the Sunbeam, our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months (1878) describes a voyage around the world.[3]

Life

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Annie Brassey was born Anna Allnutt in London in 1839 to John Allnutt.[4] As a child, she faced serious health problems. In The Last Voyage, her husband recalled that Allnutt suffered from an inherited "weakness of the chest", apparently a form of chronic bronchitis.[4] As a young woman, she also suffered severe burns when she stood too close to a fireplace and her skirt caught fire. It took six months for her to recover from them.[4]

In 1860, she married the English Member of Parliament Thomas Brassey (knighted in 1881 and became Earl Brassey in 1886), with whom she lived near his Hastings constituency.[4] The couple had five children together before they travelled aboard their luxury yacht Sunbeam. The yacht was said to have been named after their daughter – Constance Alberta – who was nicknamed Sunbeam; she died of scarlet fever, aged four, on 24 January 1873. The golden figurehead of the yacht depicting her is at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London.[5]

A Voyage in the Sunbeam, describing their journey round the world in 1876–1877 with a complement of 43, including family, friends and crew,[6] ran through many English editions and was translated into at least five languages. Her accounts of later voyages include Sunshine and Storm in the East (1880);[7] In the Trades, the Tropics, and the Roaring Forties (1885); and The Last Voyage (1889, published posthumously). She had published privately earlier works including A Flight of the Meteor, detailing two cruises in the Mediterranean on their earlier yacht Meteor and A Voyage in the Eothen a description of their travels to Canada and the United States in 1872. She was also involved with the publication of Colonel Henry Stuart-Wortley's 1882 Tahiti, a Series of Photographs.[8]

In July 1881, King Kalākaua of Hawaii, who had been greatly pleased with her description of his kingdom, was entertained at Normanhurst Castle, and invested Lady Brassey with the Royal Order of Kapiolani.[9]

At home in England, she performed charitable work, largely for the St John Ambulance Association. Her collection of ethnographic and natural history material was shown in a museum at her husband's London house until it was moved to Hastings Museum in 1919.[10] There are also several photograph albums and other ephemera held at Hastings Library. However, the vast majority of her photograph albums are now housed in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. The collection of 70 albums, each of 72 to 80 thick board pages, contain works by Brassey and others she collected, including those of commercial photographers.[11] Brassey herself was an accomplished photographer. She joined the Photographic Society of London (later the Royal Photographic Society) in 1873 and remained a member until her death,[12] and she exhibited some of her work in its exhibitions in 1873 and 1886.[13]

Lady Brassey's last voyage on the Sunbeam was to India and Australia, undertaken in November 1886 to improve her health. On the way to Mauritius, she died of malaria on 14 September 1887, and was buried at sea.[1][14][15]

Works

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Library resources about
Anna Brassey
By Anna Brassey
  • Sunbeam under full sail
    Sunbeam under full sail
  • Lord Brassey and his wife entertaining King Kalākaua of Hawaii, 1881
    Lord Brassey and his wife entertaining King Kalākaua of Hawaii, 1881
  • From A Voyage in the Sunbeam[17]
    From A Voyage in the Sunbeam[17]
  • Monkshaven on fire, possible sketch by Anna Brassey 28 September 1876
    Monkshaven on fire, possible sketch by Anna Brassey 28 September 1876
  • Memorial plaque to Brassey in Catsfield church
    Memorial plaque to Brassey in Catsfield church

References

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  1. ^ a b 'Lady Anna Brassey', National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 22 February 2008.
  2. ^ Marshall, Edward Henry (1901). "Brassey, Anna" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  3. ^ Brassey, Annie. "A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam': Our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months (1879)". Retrieved 4 February 2013.
  4. ^ a b c d "Annie Brassey's Voyages". Hot off the Press. 15 January 2012. Retrieved 30 June 2017.
  5. ^ "Sunbeam [Constance Alberta Brassey]". Retrieved 22 July 2013.
  6. ^ Lives of Girls Who Became famous, Sarah Knowles Bolton, accessed April 2009
  7. ^ Brassey, Annie. "Sunshine and Storm in the East, Or, Cruises to Cyprus and Constantinople (1880)". Retrieved 4 February 2013.
  8. ^ "Death of Lady Brassey". Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser. 13 October 1887. p. 5.
  9. ^ "Girls Famous". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 6 July 2013.
  10. ^ The Brassey Collection, Hastings Museum Archived 18 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine, accessed June 2009.
  11. ^ Micklewright, Nancy. A Victorian Traveller in the Middle East. Hants, England: Ashgate. p. 60.
  12. ^ Members of the Royal Photographic Society 1853–1901 Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  13. ^ Exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society 1870–1915 Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  14. ^ Lives of Girls who became famous, Sarah Knowles Bolton. Accessed June 2009.
  15. ^ The Last Voyage (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1889).
  16. ^ "Review of A Voyage in the Sunbeam by Annie Brassey". The Canadian Monthly and National Review. II: 120–122. 1879.
  17. ^ Illustrations from A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam', by Annie Allnut Brassey

Sources

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Media related to Anna Brassey at Wikimedia Commons

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