| Description |
xx, 555 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm |
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text txt rdacontent |
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still image sti rdacontent |
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unmediated n rdamedia |
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volume nc rdacarrier |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 452-538) and index. |
| Contents |
Prologue: Two sisters of blazing genius -- Five fatherless Porter children (1779-90) -- London's Covent Garden and Maria's teenage tales (1790-96) -- Two girls masquerading as society gentlemen : Jane's and Maria's early fictions and the Caulfield brothers (1794-97) -- In spite of the prudish world : the sister novelists and the great historical picture (1798-1800) -- Cut my heart : Jane and Maria's rival mentors (1798-1801) -- Gone theatrical mad : Maria's plays, Jane's new romance, and the enchanting Kembles (1801) -- "The fire! The splendour!" : Maria's opera, Jane's bestseller, and the war hero, Sir Sidney Smith (1802-3) -- Hearts and darts : Maria's sighing soldier (1803-4) -- How wild is the world : celebrity Jane's suitors and a defense of crim. con. (1804) -- Taking up a rose with the left hand : the Porter women secretly retrench, as Jane is nearly buried alive (1804-5) -- Where the scale turns : Jane's warring passions and Robert's Russian adventures (1805-7) -- Finally in his arms : the return of Maria's sighing soldier (1805-9) -- He must be closed up : the end of Jane's Henry (1807-9) -- Champagne, orange juice, and the Margravine : Maria's year of luxury and love (1809) -- Family misfortunes and Jane's Scottish chiefs (1810) -- Horror princess : Russians in Britain, Maria's Recluse, and Jane's redoubled fame (1811-14) -- Monstrous literary vampires : Jane and Maria, after Walter Scott (1814-16) -- Beware of imagination : Jane's pastor, Maria's two novels, and Colonel Dan (1816-18) -- Played by Kean : Jane's dramas at the Drury Lane Theatre (1817-19) -- Tortured for others : Maria, Jane, and the royal librarian (1819-24) -- Strange, unworthy brother : Jane and Maria publish together and William writes away (1824-31) -- Separating sisters : a pitiless and cold-blooded plan (1831-32) -- Preserve and destroy : Jane's friends and enemies (1832-40) -- Her younger self again : Jane and Robert reunited (1841-42) -- A chair of one's own (1842-50) -- Coda : Three or four closely packed sea chests : the historic, confused, and unsorted Porter correspondence (after 1850). |
| Summary |
"Before the Brontë sisters picked up their pens, or Jane Austen's heroines Elizabeth and Jane Bennet became household names, the literary world was celebrating a different pair of sisters: Jane and Anna Maria Porter. The Porters--exact contemporaries of Jane Austen--were brilliant, attractive, self-made single women of polite reputation who between them published twenty-six books and achieved global fame. They socialized among the rich and famous, tried to hide their family's considerable debt, and fell dramatically in and out of love. Their moving letters to each other confess every detail. Because the celebrity sisters expected their renown to live on, they preserved their papers, and the secrets they contained, for any biographers to come. But history hasn't been kind to the Porters. Credit for their literary invention was given to their childhood friend, Sir Walter Scott, who never publicly acknowledged his debt to their ideas. With Scott's more prolific publication and even greater renown, the Porter sisters gradually fell from the pinnacle of celebrity to eventual obscurity. Now, Professor Devoney Looser, a Guggenheim fellow in English Literature, sets out to re-introduce the world to the authors who cleared the way for Austen, Mary Shelley, and the Brontë sisters. Capturing the Porter sisters' incredible rise, from when Anna Maria published her first book at age fourteen in 1793, through to Jane's fall from prominence in the Victorian era, and then to the auctioning off for a pittance of the family's massive archive, Sister Novelists is a groundbreaking and enthralling biography of two pioneering geniuses in historical fiction"-- Book jacket flap. |
| Subject |
Porter, Jane, 1776-1850.
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Porter, Anna Maria, 1778-1832.
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Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography
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Historical fiction -- Authorship
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Biography
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| Added Title |
Trailblazing Porter sisters |
| ISBN |
9781635575293 (hardcover)
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163557529X (hardcover)
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