Janet Mann (Jessie) (20 January 1805 – 21 April 1867) was the studio assistant of the pioneering Scottish photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson.

[7] It is reasoned that a print in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, of the King Frederick II of Saxony in 1844, taken at the studio while Hill and Adamson were unavailable, was taken by Mann.

[1] Tate curator Carol Jacobi says this demonstrates that "she must have been part of their skilful understanding of how you set up a photograph, so she is a real pioneer.

[4] Mann was included in the 2016 exhibition at Tate Britain, Painting with Light: Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Modern Age.

The main character in this historical fiction about pioneer female photographers is Ellory Mann, an imagined cousin of Jessie's who works with her as an assistant to Hill and Adamson and who then travels to Glasgow to set up her own studio.