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.
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...
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, only to be summarily withdrawn after its single, disastrous performance.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...
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...
Publishing
Amelia Bristow
A list of about 210 subscribers is given in the volume. They included Hannah More
and Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
. A sixth edition appeared in 1847.
Loeber, Rolf, and Magda Loeber. A Guide to Irish Fiction 1650-1900. Four Courts.
180
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
2: 660
The full title is...
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...
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...
Immediately after her divorce MEBCS
was living in Fludyer Street, London, but by the time she subscribed to the first volume of Anna Maria Porter
's juvenile Artless Tales (1793), her address was Purbrook...
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.
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
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...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Ham
EH
anonymously contributed Mabel (a ghost story about a deaf girl) to an anthology, The Remembrance, edited by Thomas Roscoe
and dedicated to Queen Adelaide
.
BH
's correspondence with Mary Russell Mitford
(whose earliest surviving letter dates from 25 May 1820) reveals her as an active and eclectic reader. The two women exchanged responses to Anna Maria Porter
, Amelia Opie
