Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane Porter
-
Standard Name: Porter, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Porter
JP
was largely an early nineteenth-century author: though she reached print before the end of the previous century, she let her younger and more prolific sister get the start of her in publishing. She wrote plays, poems, and diaries, and edited Sir Philip Sidney
, but she began with and is best known for her pioneering of the historical novel.
Spence's title-page bears a quotation from James Cririe
, a little-known Scots poet whom Burns had praised (and whom she cites several times later in her text). Perhaps for the sake of her original audience...
Dedications
Elizabeth Strickland
Elizabeth
collaborated with her sister again in an edition of the Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots, 1842, a project which she began and which Agnes later joined. Many of these letters were appearing...
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, 1940.
22
She published...
Textual Features
Agnes Strickland
The book loaded its subject with praise, and eagerly described royal pomp and circumstance, particularly the recent wedding. Jane Porter
had covered this from Pall Mall while AS
was in the Abbey; the author...
Dedications
Agnes Strickland
The early work had been done by Elizabeth, but Agnes cherished for Mary a romantic passion that she bestowed on no other queen.
Pope-Hennessy, Una. Agnes Strickland: Biographer of the Queens of England. Chatto and Windus, 1940.
114
The work was dedicated to Jane Porter
, who had found...
Education
Annie S. Swan
ASS
says her first conscious memory was of telling a quite deliberate lie at the age of five, and basely tempt[ing] two infant brothers to share my crime.
Swan, Annie S. My Life. Ivor Nicholson and Watson, 1934.
14
Her mother took care to cultivate...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Melesina Trench
About the first twenty pages are occupied by MT
's early reminiscences, probably written not long after her first husband's death: she frankly recorded her emotional disturbance over that event.
Trench, Melesina. The Remains of the Late Mrs. Richard Trench. Editor Trench, Richard Chenevix, Second edition, revised, Parker and Bourn, 1862.
18
Later pages mix letters...
Textual Features
Sarah Trimmer
In addition to Catharine Cappe
's work on Sunday schools and versions of fairy stories by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy
, the magazine reviewed work by a whole library of didactic, pedagogical, or improving writers, reprinted as...
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...
Textual Production
Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson
Some time after January 1817 SSW
published, with her name, a chapbook version of Jane Porter
's The Pastor's Fire-Side. She used a much extended, highly descriptive title: The Pastor's Fireside; or, Memoirs of...
