Lifespan: 1780-1832
Nationality: English/Irish
Genres: Romantic Period
Types of Work: Novels, poems, short stories
Contemporaries: Sir Walter Scott
Style:
Bio:
Anna Maria Porter was born in 1780, in Durham, England. She was only a few months old when her father, of army surgeon and dragoon William Porter, fell in battle. Her father's family were a well-known and storied branch of Irish aristocracy. Her mother, Jane Blenkinsop, was English. She was the youngest of five children. After his death, the family moved to Edinburgh, where Anna Maria's mother took on the education of her children herself, the family being left in difficult circumstances after the death of her husband.
Anna Maria early evinced an unusual precocity of genius. At the age of four, she and her elder sister, Jane, and brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter, were sent to a celebrated day-school in Edinburgh. At only five years old she read Shakespeare with precision and spirit such as could not be rivaled by her elder schoolmates. She was considered a prodigy by her school masters. At seven years old, she wrote half-a-dozen stanzas on her mother's birthday-- her first literary production.
It was in Edinburgh, while she was still a girl, that the family became acquainted with a still-young Sir Walter Scott.
Eventually, Mrs. Porter moved her family to England, where they spent several years living in the north before moving to London. In London, her mother gathered a small, but devoted circle of highly-informed and well-educated friends. These regular visitors helped to continue to shape Anna Maria's knowledge, and she drew from many of these people models for her literary characters.
Her pleasing manners, placid temper, and conversational powers gained the esteem of a large circle of acquaintances. She loved music and was said to sing sweetly and danced elegantly. She had an exuberant fertility of invention, a close observation of living manners, and an accurate discrimination of character. She was witty, lively, playful, and generous.
Anna published her first story, Artless Tales, in 1793, when she was 13. Though her works were never as popular as those of her sister, Jane Porter, Anna was much more prolific, publishing nearly 30 works in all.
Anna Maria experienced several years of ill health, including a diminution of sight leading up to her death. Despite her illness, however, her death was unexpected. She caught a fever that was rampant in Bristol, and after several days of suffering, died. She died on 21 June, 1832 while visiting a friend at Montpelier, near Bristol, England. She was buried near her brother in St. Paul's Church, Bristol. Fellow authoress and poetess Laura Sophia Temple (pen name L.S.S.) penned a poem about her shortly after her death.
You can read a detailed sketch of her life here.
Novels:
Walsh Colville (1797)
Octavia (1798)
The Lake of Killarney (1804)
A Sailor's Friendship and a Soldier's Love (1805)
The Hungarian Brothers (1807)
Don Sebastian, or, The House of Braganza: An Historical Romance (1809)
The Recluse of Norway (1814)
The Fast of St Magdalen: A Romance (1818)
The Knight of St John: A romance (1821)
The Village of Mariendorpt (1821)
Roche-blanche; or, The Hunters of the Pyrenees (1822)
Honor O'Hara (1826)
The Pilgrimage of Berenice (1826)
The Barony (1830)
With her sister, Jane Porter:
The Field of Forty Footsteps (1828)
Lochiel, or The Field of Culloden
Tales round a Winter Hearth (1821)