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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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JANE PORTER (1776 - 1850) Anna's sister Jane was also born in the Bailey in Durham City. Tall and beautiful, she used to rise at four in the morning to read and write. She read the whole of Spenser's Faerie Queen while still a child. As she grew up, her grave and preoccupied air earned her the nickname 'La Penserosa'. After her father's death, the family moved to Edinburgh, where Walter Scott (q.v.), a regular visitor, regaled the girls with tales of times gone by. Jane's method of uniting history with imaginative writing was taken up by Scott himself in 1814. Her novel Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) is one of the earliest examples of the historical novel and went through a dozen editions. It was based on eye-witness accounts from Polish refugees of the doomed independence struggle of the 1790s, and was praised by the great Polish patriot Kosciusko. The Scottish Chiefs (1810) a novel about William Wallace, was also a success (the French version was banned by Napoleon) and has remained popular with Scottish children. Chapter I of her novel The Pastor's Fireside is entitled 'Lindisfarne. Holy Island'. Though set mostly on the continent, the book ends with the Pastor 'in his old arm-chair' before the happy hearth of sacred Lindisfarne'. Jane and Anna, who both lived in London and Surrey later on, were affectionate sisters of Sir Robert Ker Porter, the historical painter.
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