#Jane Wells Webb Loudon

[marvelousmop]

Tonight in my adventures browsing through weird old books:

I wander aimlessly through a website's sci-fi section. My eyes dart to a book titled "The Mummy!". You don't see many weird old books with an exclamation mark in the title, so I'm intrigued. I click on it and see the full title: "The Mummy!: A Tale of the 22nd Century". Written in 1828. They have my attention.

Usually, I skip the Introduction portion (even if it's written by the original author), but I decided to give it a look. To broadly summarise it: "The entire plot of this book was told to me by an Angel."

My eyes are glued to the digital page.

[thebotanicalarcade]

n712_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: The ladies' flower-garden of ornamental perennials.. London,W. Smith,1843-44.. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/51087303

[love-for-carnation]

Dianthus arbuscula Jane Wells Webb Loudon (1807-1858)

Jane was an English author and early pioneer of science fiction. She wrote Gothic fiction, fantasy and horror. She also created the first popular gardening manuals, reframing the art of gardening as fit for young women. She was married to the well-known horticulturalist John Claudius Loudon, and they wrote some books together, as well as her own very successful series. After marriage to John Loudon in 1830, a Scottish botanist, garden designer and author, she re-focused her writing skills onto supporting his works and also writing her own books and periodicals. At the time, all articles were written at a level for those already in the field, and manuals were too technical for the everyday person to understand. Jane Loudon wrote gardening books illustrated with her own botanical artwork. Jane Loudon's books gave women hope and power to be able to complete the task of gardening while getting helpful hints on how to do this effectively from her works.

[beesinspace]

name change? I ask you?

I am SO glad you asked~

Well it start with a need to change the og name, I think EVERYONE in the fandom (all 12 of us lol) hates the og name, and rightfully so.

My first name change was, Cleo D'Nile, which I really liked! I then come to find out that one of the main characters in monster high is called that riiippp.

After a while, I saw @purpleskull97 's post about how ever fem Mummy character is always named after Cleopatra, I was like that's so truuuue. So I knew I wanted to do something completely different!

One of the names I looked at was Nitocris after the pharaoh, since all descriptions of her present her as female and us she/her pronouns but apparently modern historians think she may have been AMAB! But...I-I'll admit...the reason I didn't use that one is because I did comely know how to pronounce it (_ _ ") (when I looked it up all that came back was text to speech pronunciations riiipppp). Nefertiti was my next choice! (Partly because I love the nickname Nefi, partly because Nefertiti is nearly as popular at Cleopatra so I thought it was a good trade)

Next, the middle and last name. I looked up Egyptian naming conventions (anyone who is Egyptian or is of Egyptian decent please please please tell me if I'm wrong about this!!)

So if I remember correctly a name goes; |Given name| Father's Name||Grandfather's name||Last name|. With that, it got me into having to figure out Nefi's family situation, which a.) I didn't really wanna do atm and b.) Any rough ideas I'd had didn't fit the naming thing. So I ended up giving her |Given name|| Parental name|| Last name| which hopes that wasn't a terrible thing to do riipp (so her name may change again in the future lol rippp)

And finally, what the middle and last name means!!

Heru, another name for the ancient Egyptian god Horus. (them being the god linked with the sphinx is what made me choose it ;) )

Yehia, meaning God is Gracious. The person that wrote the first mummy monster book,"The Mummy!" in 1824, was Jane Wells Webb Loudon. I didn't want to shove a random British name onto my ancient Egyptian character, but found out that Jane means God is Gracious!! I was so happy when I found an Egyptian/Arabic name that ment the same thing!! XD

But yes, that is the incredibly long winded story of how I chose Nefi's name! I am honestly really happy someone asked because I really wanted to talk about how and why I got to the name that I did! Jakdhaks XD

[amuseoffyre]

In new things I learned this year, I had no idea that The Mummy! was a futuristic science fiction novel written by a 20 year old woman in 1827 and published anonymously.

Her name was Jane Wells Webb Loudon. She was born in Birmingham, England, in 1807 and she is another of the early writers of science fiction and Gothic Horror (and horticulture manuals, but that’s another story)

While there is speculation Frankenstein influenced her, in the end both of their novels got the Hammer Horror treatment in the early ages of cinema, turning an eloquent and intelligent character into a shuffling and terrifying monster. Whether the films were based specifically on her novel is not clear, but she was certainly one of the earliest authors to have a mummy rising from his tomb.

Also, in very sweet things, the man she later married read her book and was very excited by the technological innovations she wrote about pertaining to gardening (he was a horticulturist) and set out to meet the author, who he presumed was a man. They met and were married within the year :)

[mechanicalcurator]

Image from 'The ladies' flower garden of ornamental bulbous plants', 003870771

Author: WEBB, afterwards LOUDON, Jane.

Page: 343

Year: 1841

Place: London

Publisher:

View this image on Flickr

View all the images from this book

Following the link above will take you to the British Library's integrated catalogue. You will be able to download a PDF of the book this image is taken from, as well as view the pages up close with the 'itemViewer'. Click on the 'related items' to search for the electronic version of this work.

[gotojobin]

Mummy #Mummy The Victorians and Edwardians were very interested in strange things and happenings. Museums and collectors all over the world, wanted Egyptian mummies. They were often shown with other strange things in travelling shows.  One researcher (Dominic Montserrat) believes that the tale of the mummy's curse may have started just before the Victorian period; a strange show, about unwrapping mummies, took place in a theatre near London's Piccadilly Circus in 1821.  This gave an idea to an author, Jane Loudon Webb, and she wrote a fantasy story called, "The Mummy"; in this book, an angry mummy, who wants revenge, comes back to life. Then in 1869, Louisa May Alcott, the author of "Little Women", wrote a short story called "Lost in a Pyramid: The Mummy's Curse": this was about an explorer whose fiance is turned into a living mummy. Over the next 30 years, many stories followed. So, by the time of our story in Great Yarmouth, the idea of a mummy's curse was already well known.  There was also an interest in collecting 'foreign strange objects' during this time, so there may well have been a mummy's casket in the school. It is also true that some mummies were unwrapped and destroyed about this time: this was very risky because the bodies might hold dangerous germs.  During the 19th century, ghost stories became popular, as did 'spiritualism'; this is the idea that the spirit of a dead person lives on and can be 'talked to' using a special person called a 'medium'. Many mediums were shown to be cheats but the idea caught on. Often the 'spirits' seemed to let people know they were there by knocking or tapping. So, after rumours of a secret burial, when tapping noises seemed to be heard around the Church and vicarage, many people found it easy to believe that this was the mummy's spirit.

[thebotanicalarcade]

n385_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: The ladies' magazine of gardening /. London :William Smith,MDCCCXLII [1842]. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/56305343

[thebotanicalarcade]

n374_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: British wild flowers. London :William Smith,MDCCCXLVI [1846]. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/55515113

[thebotanicalarcade]

n310_w1150 by Biodiversity Heritage Library Via Flickr: The ladies' flower-garden of ornamental greenhouse plants.. London,William Smith,1848.. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/54351453