Anna Maria Porter (1778–1832) was a British poet and novelist.
The sister of Jane Porter and Robert Ker Porter, she was probably born on 17 December 1778 and was baptized in Salisbury on 25 December 1778. [1] She spent her infancy in Durham, England, the home town of her mother. Her father, William Porter (1735–1779), served as an army surgeon for 23 years and died before she was a year old. He is buried in St Oswald's Church, Durham. After the death of her father, her family settled in Edinburgh, where the Porter children attended charity school and enjoyed the friendship of Walter Scott.[2]
Throughout her life, Anna Maria was known as Maria (pronounced məɾˡaiə). Maria, being fair-haired, pretty, and outgoing, was nicknamed 'L'Allegra'. At the age of 14, Maria published her first book, Artless Tales. She was in London by the 1790s, publishing verse in the Universal Magazine. After Artless Tales, she also wrote a short novel Walsh Colville published anonymously in 1797. Though her sister Jane was the more acclaimed and popular writer, Maria was the more prolific. The Hungarian Brothers (1807), a historical romance set against the French Revolutionary Wars, was a success and went into several editions.
Maria also produced the humanitarian Tales of Pity on Fishing, Shooting and Hunting in 1814, and collaborated with her sister on collections of stories. She was one of the era's most published and respected fiction writers, with many of her works translated into French, but she also published poems and short stories and had an opera produced.
Anna Maria Porter died on 21 June 1832 from a typhus fever at the house of Mrs Colonel Booth, a friend of her brother Dr William Ogilvie Porter, Montpelier, near Bristol. Maria was buried at the churchyard of St Paul in that city.
