JACOB, Violet Augusta Mary Frederica, n. Kennedy-Erskine, born Dun, near Montrose, 1 Sept. 1863, died Kirriemuir 9 Sept. 1946. Writer and painter. Daughter of Catherine Jones, and William Henry Kennedy-Erskine, 18th Laird of Dun.

Violet Kennedy-Erskine was the eldest of three surviving children. Her father died when she was a child, in 1870, and her 16-year-old sister died suddenly and traumatically in 1883. She was raised by her Welsh mother and educated at home, the House of Dun (now NTS), ‘Balnillo House’ in her novel Flemington. Her writing often draws on the history of her ancient, landed family, which she recorded in The Lairds of Dun (1931), and on the landscapes and people of Angus. In 1894, she married Arthur Otway Jacob (1867—1936), an Irishman serving in the British Army. After their son Harry was born in 1895, they spent several years in India with Arthur Jacob's regiment, a happy period recorded in Violet's diaries and letters to her mother from Indore State. She nursed in Mhow military hospital but also enjoyed considerable freedom, meeting rulers of the Central Indian States and riding on the plains. Five volumes of her Indian flower paintings are held at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.

Returning to Britain in 1901, she lived mainly in English garrison towns, apart from a spell in Egypt (1903—4). However, on leave and after retirement, the Jacobs frequently stayed near Llanigon in the Welsh borders. Her first, well-received novel, The Sheepstealers (1902), depicts social unrest in 1840s Wales (the ‘Rebecca riots’). Her Scottish fiction with its vivid Scots dialogue is especially outstanding. The Interloper (1904), set in early 19thcentury Angus, found contemporary success, and John Buchan described the powerful Flemington (1911) as ‘the best Scots romance since The Master of Ballantrae’ (NLS, MS 27416). Flemington depicts personal and political turmoil in ‘this tormented country’ during and after the 1745 Jacobite Rising, when, as one character remarks: ‘Whiles, it's no sae easy tellin’ havers frae truth’ (1998 edn., pp. 335, 361).

Violet Jacob nursed during the First World War. Her son, Harry, died at the Somme in 1916, aged 20, and after this tragedy she wrote only short prose and poetry. Her poetry was mainly in Scots at this time, drawing on ballad and folksong traditions.