Anna Maria Porter

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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.
Photograph of an engraving of Anna Maria Porter from a portrait by George Henry Harlow, c. 1805. She is seated, seen from the waist up, and seems to be wearing costume: a dress with puffed sleeves, a high collar that stands back from her shoulders, and a flower pinned in the centre of the bust. She holds a small stringed instrument in her lap, and her dark hair is pulled back and decorated with flowers. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Ellen Weeton
Though she scorned circulating libraries, her recorded comments on books include praise for Anna Maria Porter 's The Lake of Killarney, Mary Ann Hanway 's Ellinor, and Elizabeth Hamilton 's The Cottagers of...
Publishing Sarah Tytler
ST found in J. A. Froude of Fraser's Magazine a very agreeable editor who gave his contributors a free hand, was sympathetic, could pay a cordial compliment, while such criticism as he offered was gentle...
Friends, Associates Agnes Strickland
They began to build a network of literary friends and potential supporters: Thomas Campbell , Robert Southey , Charles Lamb , editor William Jerdan , and even more helpfully women like Barbara Hofland , Jane
Textual Production Agnes Strickland
Even before settling in London, AS began her professional authorial career with tales for children, many published in The Parting Gift, of which she was at that time the editor.
Pope-Hennessy, Una. Agnes Strickland: Biographer of the Queens of England. Chatto and Windus.
22
She published...
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.
325-6
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Anna Maria Porter
which had been formed, no doubt, in Durham. In...
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...
death Mary Robinson
An autopsy revealed six large gall-stones.
Highfill, Philip H. et al. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press.
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.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
269
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton.
88
Performance of text Jane Porter
JP 's tragedy Switzerland (which has been sometimes wrongly attributed to her sister Anna Maria ), was performed at Drury Lane , only to be summarily withdrawn after its single, disastrous performance.
Archival evidence is...
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.
264-5
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge.
Publishing Jane Porter
JP seems not to have begun writing seriously as early as her younger sister, who probably reached print before her. She helped during the 1790s to write descriptive pamphlets to accompany her brother's earliest military...
Textual Production Jane Porter
In 1800 appeared a pamphlet essay which may be by JP or to her and her sister : A Defence of the Profession of an Actor.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Stuart Bennett Rare Books & Manuscripts: A Catalogue of Books By, For, and About Women of the British Isles, 1696-1892. Stuart Bennett Rare Books & Manuscripts.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Thomas McLean
Publishing Jane Porter
JP was seen as the senior partner in the paired agreements which she and her sister made with Longman on 1 June 1808. Each was to deliver a novel within a year; Jane was to...
Literary responses Jane Porter
The notice in the Critical Review began by using this novel as a peg for a defence of good novels in general, especially, apparently, those dealing with national histories. The existence of many incompetent novelists...
Textual Production Jane Porter
Late in her career JP co-authored collections with her more prolific younger sister : a two-volume collection of short stories (Tales Round a Winter Hearth (after February 1826), to which she contributed My Chamber...

Timeline

2 July 1798: The conservative Lady's Monthly Museum: or...

Writing climate item

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.

Texts

Porter, Anna Maria. A Sailor’s Friendship, and a Soldier’s Love. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805.
Porter, Anna Maria, and Sir Robert Ker Porter. Artless Tales. Printed and sold for the author by L. Wayland, 1793.
Porter, Anna Maria. Artless Tales. Printed and sold for the author by Hookham and Carpenter, 1795.
Porter, Anna Maria, and Shannon Goetze. Artless Tales. Editors Robertson, Leslie et al., Juvenilia Press, 2003.
Porter, Anna Maria. Ballad Romances. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1811.
Porter, Anna Maria. Coming Out. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1828.
Porter, Anna Maria, and Jane Porter. Coming Out; and, The Field of the Forty Footsteps. Longman, 1828.
Porter, Anna Maria. Don Sebastian. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809.
Porter, Anna Maria. Honor O’Hara. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826.
Goetze, Shannon et al. “Introduction”. Artless Tales, edited by Leslie Robertson et al., Juvenilia Press, 2003, p. ii - viii.
Porter, Anna Maria. Octavia. T. N. Longman, 1798.
Porter, Anna Maria. Roche-Blanche. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1822.
Porter, Anna Maria. Tales of Pity on Fishing, Shooting, and Hunting. J. Harris, 1814.
Porter, Jane, and Anna Maria Porter. Tales Round a Winter Hearth. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826.
Porter, Anna Maria. The Barony. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1830.
Porter, Anna Maria. The Fast of St Magdalen. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818.
Porter, Anna Maria. The Hungarian Brothers. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807.
Porter, Anna Maria. The Knight of St John. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817, http://U of A, Special Collections.
Porter, Anna Maria. The Lake of Killarney. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1804.
Porter, Anna Maria. The Recluse of Norway. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814.
Porter, Anna Maria. The Village of Mariendorpt. Longman, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821.
Porter, Anna Maria. Walsh Colville. Lee and Hurst; T. C. Jones, 1797.