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
death Mary Robinson
An autopsy revealed six large gall-stones.
Highfill, Philip H. et al. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–1993.
13: 37
Though not much past forty, she had outlived all of her immediate family except her daughter and one brother. Jane Porter wrote an obituary intended for periodical...
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...
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...
Dedications Anna Maria Porter
It is dedicated to the author's mother and sister : Those Dear Friends, in whose domestic society the principal part of this work was composed.
Porter, Anna Maria. The Knight of St John. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817, 3 vols., http://U of A, Special Collections.
prelims
Two further English editions, a New York edition, and...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Selina Davenport
Her father, Captain Charles Granville Wheler , was a great-nephew of Sir George Wheler , a traveller, clergyman, scholar, and early member of the Royal Society , who had a family estate in Kent. (...
Family and Intimate relationships Anna Maria Porter
AMP 's sister Jane was a writer like herself.
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research, 1992.
257
Family and Intimate relationships Selina Davenport
The marriage ended around 1810 in an acrimonious separation. SD left her husband, for what her supporters later said were sufficient reasons.
Archives of the Royal Literary Fund, 1790-1918.
Years later Jane Porter wrote that SDis known by the name...
Family and Intimate relationships Selina Davenport
In 1834 Jane Porter was making strenuous efforts to find a publisher for a novel, Young Hearts (which she called indeed a pretty thing), written not by SD but by her younger daughter, Theodora Peers
Family and Intimate relationships Maria Theresa Kemble
They had become engaged in 1800. John Philip Kemble and other family members disapproved, and perhaps hoped that Charles would change his mind if made to wait. People saw MTK 's manners as rough and...
Friends, Associates Maria Theresa Kemble
One of those who entertained early doubts about MTK was Jane Porter . She, however, was won round, and wrote a sonnet for her on Charles Kemble's absence abroad in 1801.
Highfill, Philip H. et al. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–1993.
327
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 ...
Friends, Associates Selina Davenport
Her tempestuous but close friendship with Jane and Anna Maria Porter began by the mid 1790s.
Looser, Devoney. Email to Isobel Grundy about Selina Davenport. 4 Aug. 2011.
Her marriage caused a hiatus in this friendship, but it later resumed, and in any case with Jane it...
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
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...

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.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Robert I

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

Writing climate item

By April 1818

John Keats published Endymion: A Poetic Romance.
Quarterly Review. J. Murray.
19 (1818): 204
McLean, Thomas. “Off-Stage Dramas: Jane Porter, Edmund Kean, and the Tragedy of SwitzerlandKeats-Shelley Review, Vol.
25
, No. 2, Maney Publishing, Sept. 2011, pp. 147-59.
153-4

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.
Hobsbawm, Eric John. The Age of Revolution 1789-1848. Vintage, 1996.
110
Cowie, Leonard W., and Leonard Woolfson. Years of Nationalism: European History 1815-1890. Edward Arnold, 1985.
132-4
Gildea, Robert. Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800-1914. Oxford University Press, 1987.
69
McLean, Thomas. The Other East and Nineteenth-Century British Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
86

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, 2 vols.
Porter, Anna Maria, and Jane Porter. Coming Out; and, The Field of the Forty Footsteps. Longman, 1828, 3 vols.
Porter, Jane. Duke Christian of Luneburg. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824, 3 vols., 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, 3 vols.
Porter, Jane, and Anna Maria Porter. Tales Round a Winter Hearth. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826, 2 vols.
Porter, Jane. Thaddeus of Warsaw. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1803, 4 vols.
Porter, Jane. Thaddeus of Warsaw. 10th ed., Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819, 4 vols.
Porter, Jane. The Pastor’s Fire-Side. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1817, 4 vols., http://U of A, Special Collections.
Porter, Jane. The Scottish Chiefs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1810, 5 vols.
Porter, Jane. The Scottish Chiefs. Derby and Jackson, 1856.
Porter, Jane. The Two Princes of Persia. Crosby and Letterman, 1801.