Jane Porter

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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

Milestones

3 December 1775

JP was born in Durham, the middle one of five children. She was not baptised until 17 January 1776, with the result that 1776 has often been given as the year of her birth.
McLean, Thomas. “Jane Porter’s Later Works, 1825–1846”. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol.
20
, No. 2, pp. 45-62.
45n1
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
264

By September 1803

JP published her historical novel Thaddeus of Warsaw, dedicated to the naval hero Sir Sidney Smith .
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
39 (1803): 120
McLean, Thomas. The Other East and Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Palgrave Macmillan.
66

24 May 1850

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

Biography

Birth and Family

3 December 1775

JP was born in Durham, the middle one of five children. She was not baptised until 17 January 1776, with the result that 1776 has often been given as the year of her birth.
McLean, Thomas. “Jane Porter’s Later Works, 1825–1846”. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol.
20
, No. 2, pp. 45-62.
45n1
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research.
264

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