Jane Porter

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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.
Black and white oval image from a painting of Jane Porter by George Henry Harlow, before 1811. She wears a simple light-coloured, low-necked bodice, and a mantle with ruffled shoulders. Her dark curly hair is piled on her head, and her name is written below.bb

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
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 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...
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, Parker and Bourn.
18
Later pages mix letters...
Friends, Associates Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
In London in 1824 she had a socially unsuccessful meeting with Wordsworth , who was by now a thorough reactionary in politics. He went to some pains to snub her; she refused to notice this...
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.
14
Her mother took care to cultivate...
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...
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.
114
The work was dedicated to Jane Porter , who had found...
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...
Textual Production Elizabeth Isabella Spence
The final travel book by EIS , Letters from the North Highlands, During the Summer 1816, used letters sent to Jane Porter during her journey.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Letters from the North Highlands, During the Summer 1816. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
prelims v
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 Elizabeth Isabella Spence
During the 1820s Spence and Benger, then past their youth and each living on a pittance, were associated in running a salon on the model of those of the rich (like Lady Holland) or the...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Isabella Spence
The title-page quotes Burns and Scott . The preface remarks that books based on female impressions of national manners and moral character have succeeded in the past.
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Sketches of the Present Manners, Customs, and Scenery of Scotland. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
prelims iv
The book is again made up...

Timeline

23-24 June 1314: The English attempt to conquer Scotland was...

National or international item

23-24 June 1314

The English attempt to conquer Scotland was fought off by Scottish forces under Robert Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn near Stirling.

By April 1818: John Keats published Endymion: A Poetic ...

Writing climate item

By April 1818

John Keats published Endymion: A Poetic Romance.

29 November 1830 - May 1831: Uprisings in Poland were suppressed by Russia...

National or international item

29 November 1830 - May 1831

Uprisings in Poland were suppressed by Russia after considerable military operations.

9 August 1838: The Hampstead circulating library, intended...

Writing climate item

9 August 1838

The Hampstead circulating library, intended for the middling and lower ranks, which had stocked no novels on principle except those of Scott and Edgeworth , found these were borrowed so much more often than...

Texts

Porter, Jane. A Sketch of the Campaigns of Count Alexander Suwarrow Rymnikski. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1804.
Sidney, Sir Philip. Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney. Editor Porter, Jane, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807.
Porter, Anna Maria, and Jane Porter. Coming Out; and, The Field of the Forty Footsteps. Longman, 1828.
Porter, Jane. Duke Christian of Luneburg. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824, http://U of A, Special Collections.
Porter, William Ogilvie. Sir Edward Seaward’s Narrative of his Shipwreck. Editor Porter, Jane, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1831.
Porter, Jane, and Anna Maria Porter. Tales Round a Winter Hearth. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826.
Porter, Jane. Thaddeus of Warsaw. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1803.
Porter, Jane. Thaddeus of Warsaw. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819.
Porter, Jane. The Pastor’s Fire-Side. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817, http://U of A, Special Collections.
Porter, Jane. The Scottish Chiefs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1810.
Porter, Jane. The Scottish Chiefs. Derby and Jackson, 1856.
Porter, Jane. The Two Princes of Persia. Crosby and Letterman, 1801.