Anna Maria Porter

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.