[1] Her elder brother, Henry Alleyne Nicholson became the Regius Professor of Natural History at Aberdeen University.

[1] Her most renowned work is her biography Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle (1891).

[2] She is also known for publishing Jane Carlyle's correspondence with her intimate friend Geraldine Jewsbury.

John Ireland was a composer who taught at the Royal College of Music.

Her other son, Alleyne Ireland, wrote Tropical Colonization (1889), The Province of Burma (1907), Democracy and the Human Equation (1921), and The New Korea (1926).