Jane Porter
JANE PORTER, British novelist, was born at Durham in 1776. Her life and literary reputation were closely linked with those of her sister, Anna Maria Porter, novelist, and her brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter, painter and traveler. After their father's death in 1779 their mother removed to Edinburgh, where the children, as they grew older, had their love of romance stimulated by association with Flora Macdonald and the young Walter Scott. The sister, Anna Maria, published a long series of works during the years between 1797 and 1830; but in the mean time, Jane Porter, "whose intellectual power, though slower of development and in expression, was greater than her sister's," published her first work, "Thaddeus of Warsaw" (1803), which gained for her an immediate popularity. It was translated into several languages, and won for the author the election as canoness of the Teutonic order of St. Joachim.
Some years before the appearance of Scott's "Waverley," Jane Porter attempted the national romance in her "Scottish Chiefs." The story of Wallace had been a great favorite with her since childhood; and the poem of "Blind Harry" (Henry the Minstrel) was doubtless well known to her. The book lacked historical accuracy and she made the figure of Wallace a rather sentimental conception of the character; yet her picturesque power of narration saved the story from oblivion.
Miss Porter's later works include "The Pastor's Fireside," "Duke Christian of Lunenburg," "Coming Out," and "The Field of Forty Footsteps." She wrote in conjunction with her sister, "Tales' Round a Winter Hearth." She wrote also some plays and made frequent contributions to current periodicals. Miss Porter joined her brother in Russia for a time, but at his death she returned to England to reside with her eldest brother at Bristol, where she died on the 24th of May, 1850.