Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Anna Maria Porter
-
Standard Name: Porter, Anna Maria
Birth Name: Anna Maria Porter
Pseudonym: A. P—r
Though she also wrote poetry and other genres, AMP
's name rests on her almost thirty historical romances (totalling 54 volumes). Many had US editions and French translations. She tends to focus on male rather than female relationships. Her settings range across European history and geography; she is interested in independence struggles, and supports an idealised version of rational, constitutional, British middle-class polity against tyranny on the one hand and barbarianism on the other. Her plots emphasize sentiment and morality and (like Sophia Lee
's The Recess) make national events a backdrop to private crises and intrigues. Though her earlier work was regularly judged inferior to that of her sister Jane
, she became very successful.
"Anna Maria Porter" This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
Highfill, Philip H., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1993.
13: 37
Though not much past forty, she had outlived all of her immediate family except her daughter and one brother. Jane Porter
wrote an obituary intended for periodical...
death
Jane Porter
JP
died in Bristol, having outlived her younger sister, Anna Maria
, by nearly twenty years, and having been some time in bad health.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge, 1989.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research, 1992.
269
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton, 1899.
88
Family and Intimate relationships
Jane Porter
JP
lived for most of her life with her younger sister, Anna Maria
, who also became a writer.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research, 1992.
264-5
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge, 1989.
Friends, Associates
Selina Davenport
Her tempestuous but close friendship with Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
began by the mid 1790s.
Looser, Devoney. Email to Isobel Grundy about Selina Davenport.
Her marriage caused a hiatus in this friendship, but it later resumed, and in any case with Jane it...
Friends, Associates
Mary Robinson
After MR
became known as the prince's mistress, the double standard in public morality made it virtually impossible for respectable women to treat her as a friend. Her admiration for Sarah Siddons
was not reciprocated...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
EIS
says that her early friendship with Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
was inherited, developing from the friendship between their parents,
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Letters from the North Highlands, During the Summer 1816. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817.
325-6
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
under Anna Maria Porter
which had been formed, no doubt, in Durham. In...
Friends, Associates
Mary Lamb
One of those prepared to welcome her was Elizabeth Benger
, who invited the brother and sister to tea, and was keen to get them back again to meet Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
...
HL
, like her sister, was personally friendly with many other writers of her day: Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
, Ann Radcliffe
(even though the latter probably did not, as often reported, attend the...
Friends, Associates
Sophia Lee
Their school, together with their literary careers, brought SL
and her sisters a wide circle of friends and contacts, including Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
. The novelist Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins describes Sophia as surrounded...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
Having already praised many contemporary women writers in print, EOB
was now able to meet them. The move to London was accomplished principally through the zealous friendship of Miss Sarah Wesley
, who had already...
Friends, Associates
Mary, Lady Champion de Crespigny
MLCC
mentions her warm friendships with leading officers of the Royal Navy
, whom she knew through her husband's position. A number of writers too, including Mariana Starke
, became her personal friends.
Crawford, Elizabeth. “Posts tagged Mariana Starke”. Woman and her Sphere.
JP
was, with her sister
, one of those praised by John O'Keeffe
in his poem Female Authors, Being an Answer to a Lady, who asserted, that by transmigration the soul of Shakespeare
lived in...
Literary responses
Fanny Holcroft
The Critical gave this novel a detailed notice starting from the proposition that FH
had not had critical justice because of unfair comparisons with her eminent father. It praised the contrast in personality between the...
Timeline
2 July 1798
The conservative Lady's Monthly Museum: or polite repository of amusement and instruction published its first number. Sometimes called The Ladies' Monthly Museum . . . it ran until the 1830s.