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
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...
Friends, Associates
Mary, Lady Champion de Crespigny
MLCC
mentions her warm friendships with leading officers of the Royal Navy
, whom she knew through her husband's position. A number of writers too, including Mariana Starke
, became her personal friends.
Crawford, Elizabeth. “Posts tagged Mariana Starke”. Woman and her Sphere.
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...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Lee
HL
, like her sister, was personally friendly with many other writers of her day: Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
, Ann Radcliffe
(even though the latter probably did not, as often reported, attend the...
Friends, Associates
Sophia Lee
Their school, together with their literary careers, brought SL
and her sisters a wide circle of friends and contacts, including Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
. The novelist Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins describes Sophia as surrounded...
Friends, Associates
Mary Lamb
One of those prepared to welcome her was Elizabeth Benger
, who invited the brother and sister to tea, and was keen to get them back again to meet Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
...
Literary responses
Fanny Holcroft
The Critical gave this novel a detailed notice starting from the proposition that FH
had not had critical justice because of unfair comparisons with her eminent father. It praised the contrast in personality between the...
Textual Production
Barbara Hofland
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
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
.