The Scottish writer and poet Violet Jacob was born Violet Augusta Mary Frederica Kennedy-Erskine on 1 September 1863 in Angus. The Kennedy-Erskine family owned the Dun estate near Montrose. She was a great-granddaughter of the Scottish peer Archibald Kennedy (1770-1846), 1st Marquess of Ailsa (also known as Lord Kennedy, and as The Earl of Cassilis).
Violet Kennedy-Erskine married Arthur Otway Jacob (d. 1936), an Irish Major in the British Army, on 27 October 1894. She accompanied him to India where he was serving (with the cavalry regiment, the 20th Royal Hussars). The Jacobs had a son, their only child, in 1895, Arthur Henry (Harry) Jacob. He died however as a soldier at the battle of the Somme in 1916, during the First World War, while serving with the 4th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers.
The area of Montrose where her family seat of Dun was situated was the setting for much of Violet Jacob's fiction. In her poetry, she was associated with Scots revivalists. Her Wild Geese from 'Songs of Angus' (1915), takes the form of a conversation between the poet and the North Wind, and is a sad poem of longing for home. Her work spans five decades and includes: a novel, The Sheepstealers (1902); the historical novel Flemington (1911); short stories, Tales of my own country (1922); a history, the Lairds of Dun (1931); and, The Scottish poems of Violet Jacob (1944).
On 3 July 1936, Violet Jacob, authoress, was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D) by the University of Edinburgh. She was noted as a 'writer and poet' in the University of Edinburgh Journal, Vol. 8. 1936-1937., p34.
Latterly Violet Jacob had lived in Kirriemuir, Angus, and she died on 9 September 1946.
