The Scottish Chiefs

Jane Porter (17 January 1776 - 24 May 1850) was an English historical novelist, dramatist and literary figure. Jane Porter was born in Durham as the third of the five children of William Porter and Jane née Blenkinsop. Tall and beautiful as she grew up, Jane Porter's grave air earned her the nickname La Penserosa ("the pensive girl"). After her father's death, her family moved to Edinburgh, where Sir Walter Scott was a regular visitor. Some time afterwards the family moved to London, where the sisters became acquainted with a number of literary women: Elizabeth Inchbald, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Hannah More, Elizabeth Hamilton, Selina Davenport, Elizabeth Benger and Mrs Champion de Crespigny. Porter's siblings also achieved some fame in their lifetimes; her sister Anna Maria Porter was also a novelist; her brother Sir Robert Ker Porter was a noted painter. Porter is considered to have "crafted and pioneered many of the narrative tools most commonly associated with both the national tale and the historical novel." Her 1810 work The Scottish Chiefs, about William Wallace, one of the earliest examples of the historical novel, was very successful and the French version was banned by Napoleon). It has remained popular with Scottish children. The Pastor's Fireside (1815) was a story about the later Stuarts. Porter contributed to periodicals and wrote the play Switzerland (1819), which seems to have been deliberately sabotaged by its lead Edmund Kean and closed after its first performance. She is sometimes "credited" with the 1822 production Owen, Prince of Powys, which closed after only three performances, but this was actually the work of Samson Penley. Porter also wrote Tales Round a Winter Hearth (1821), Coming Out (1828), and The Field of Forty Footsteps (1828) with her sister, Anna Maria.