Jacob was born Violet Augusta Mary Frederica Kennedy-Erskine, at the House of Dun,[2] the daughter of William Henry Kennedy-Erskine (1 July 1828 – 15 September 1870) of Dun, Forfarshire, a captain in the 17th Lancers and Catherine Jones (died 13 February 1914), the only daughter of William Jones of Henllys, Carmarthenshire.

Her father was the son of John Kennedy-Erskine (1802–1831) of Dun and Augusta FitzClarence (1803–1865), the illegitimate daughter of King William IV and Dorothy Jordan.

She married, at St John's Episcopal Church, Princes Street, Edinburgh, on 27 October 1894, Arthur Otway Jacob (1867–1936),[2] an Irish major in the British Army, and accompanied him to India where he was serving.

[11] Apart from her collections of poetry and short stories, Violet Jacob published an Erskine family history (Lairds of Dun, 1931) and five novels, the best known of which is the tragic Flemington (1911; reissued in 1994),[12] set in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745.

[2][12] Isobel Murray (1983), "The Forgotten Violet Jacob", reviewing The Lum Hat and Other Stories", in Sheila G. Hearn, ed., Cencrastus No.