Jane Dalton (1742 – 10 December 1817) was an English collector of botanical books and a translator.[1]
Her father was Richard Dalton. At some point before 1766, she became the ward of her first cousin Daniel Malthus, father of Thomas Robert Malthus,[2] and lived with that household at The Rookery, Westcott, until 1768, participating in its learned discussions.[3]
In 1773 she was described in a poem by Richard Graves in the character of "Delia":[4]
In 1788, she lived in Paris, corresponding with Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, who was director of the Paris Botanical Gardens.[5] She translated Bernadin de Saint-Pierre’s novel Paul et Virginie into English, publishing it as Paul and Mary: An Indian Story in 1789, anonymously and for no fee. She has also been proposed as the translator of An Essay on Landscape, a translation of La composition des paysages by Rousseau's pupil René de Girardin.[6] Her talent for landscape design was noted by a contemporary: "Everyone consulted her when they had gardens to improve."[7]
Daniel Mathers described her as "a botanist to the death" and, when he died in 1800, left her "all my botanical books in which the name of Rousseau is written" – that is, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s personal library. In total, 271 volumes bearing her bookplate, containing 311 separate works, make up part of the Malthus Collection at Old Library, Jesus College.[8]