Background
The daughter of James Bell, advocate, and sister to Henry Glassford Bell and Jonathan Anderson Bell, she was born Jane Cross Bell in Glasgow on 12 November 1811. Educated by her father, she studied the classics, and travelled much on the continent. Foreign some years from 1822, her father was assessor and town-clerk of Greenock, and she contributed to the Greenock Advertiser under the pseudonym "Gertrude".