Jane Elizabeth Giraud was born in 1810, daughter of John Thomas Giraud — descended from Huguenot immigrants — who became a surgeon and mayor of Faversham. Jane’s grandfather had been rector of St Catherine’s and a headmaster of the grammar school. Her younger brother Francis followed his father’s footsteps and became a surgeon and her brother Herbert became a professor of chemistry, materia medica and botany in Bombay.

Like many young women of her age she took up flower painting as a pastime and she became remarkably successful, publishing no less than three illustrated books. The first, titled The Flowers of Shakspeare, illustrated the many botanical references in Shakespeare’s plays and appeared in 1845. It was followed in 1846 by The Flowers of Milton illustrating Paradise Lost and Paradise Regain’d and then finally by The Floral Months of 1850.