Author: Porter, Anna Maria (1780-1832)
Title: Ballad Romances, and Other Poems.
Date: 1811
Biographical Information
Anna Maria Porter was born in 1780 Durham, England. She was the daughter of William Porter, an army surgeon who died shortly before her birth, and was the youngest of five children, including her sister the more famous writer Jane Porter. After William Porter’s death, the children’s mother was left with very little to sustain the family, and so she moved the large family away from England to Edinburgh, Scotland. Her family neighbored near Walter Scott, who seems to have influenced both Anna and Jane towards writing and poetry. Anna attended George Fulton’s school in Scotland and quickly exceeded expectations: she was named top of her class early on despite being one of the youngest in her classes. Once she started writing she found herself unable to stop. She published Artless Tales at twelve-years-old and continued to publish throughout her lifetime. Almost immediately after publishing a second volume of Artless Tales, Anna Porter published her first novel, Walsh Colville (1797). After releasing a second novel soon after her first, she found that public interest in her writing was remarkably widespread. She was urged to continue as a poetess and leave the novels to her sister’s more capable abilities. Her early novels received only a lukewarm public reception, unlike the wide success and popularity of her poetry, but in 1807 she released her most popular novel, The Hungarian Brothers.
Anna Maria Porter published some thirty works in her lifetime, many of which were successful enough to inspire multiple editions as well as to be translated into languages other than English, such as French.
Her older sister, Jane, received much more lasting recognition for her work, but the two did occasionally collaborate on volumes such as Tales Round a Winter Hearth. Though it might be assumed that tensions would have been high between the competitive sisters (Jane and Anna), it is noted in multiple sources that the sisters were very close with one another and their mother, and that their competitive spirits seldom clashed in serious ways.
Indeed, the close relationship enjoyed by Anna and Jane Porter often makes it very difficult to separate the accomplishments of one from those of the other. The two sisters were known to work collaboratively and to help one another in editing their works. Their mother died in 1831, leaving the closely-bound and affectionate sisters heartbroken, and indeed Anna’s health began to decline seriously in the aftermath of her mother’s death. The cholera and persistent fevers that plagued Anna Porter to the point of immobility resulted finally in her death in 1832.
Prepared by Meghan McAuliffe, University of Nebraska, Spring 2018
© Meghan McAuliffe, 2018