Sister Novelists - Review of Book by Devoney Looser

Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Jane Austen and the Brontës by Devoney Looser.

I wonder whether the blurb on this book was written by the publishers (Bloomsbury), or by the author. Nowadays publishers usually ask the author to write it. It claims:-"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 26 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 the sisters' works as his inspiration. With Scott's more prolific publication and even greater fame, 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 14 in 1793, through to Jane's fall from the pinnacle of fame 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."

   Hmm, this is a brazen appeal to the popularity of Austen and the Brontës, in fact it's what called in marketing a "hard sell" ...but it's not very plausible. 

   To claim that the Porter sisters "paved the way for Jane Austen and the Brontës" is about as convincing as to claim that the Roman road from London to Bath paved the way for Edward I to invade Scotland. Because the fact is that Jane Austen (whether or not she had ever read any of the Porter sisters' books) set off in a completely different direction. She did something so different that there is just no comparison with the Porters and no real relevance. It's true that the Porter sisters were well known in their time (though they were never lionized to the extent that Mme de Staël or Sydney Morgan, the great female literary "celebs" of this period, were). They wrote plays and even opera libretti, as well as novels. But the Porters' modest degree of fame never inspired or, I think, affected Austen at all. Her literary models were Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth, both of whom wrote about the everyday life of women in contemporary England. And Austen's great virtue is her sharp, humorous observation. Likewise the Brontës wrote about the Yorkshire they knew, and the harshness of the horrible schools they had experienced. The Porters' novels are pure flights of imagination and escapism. Many of them have the subtitle "Romance", which I think is apt.

   As for inspiring Walter Scott, he had the wisdom to write about Scotland, which he knew first hand and for which he had a deep passion. The Porters wrote about faraway lands, places they had never visited. That makes a difference.

  The Monthly Mirror wrote in 1810, "The works of the Misses Porter are eagerly welcomed by parents and guardians, as true champions in the cause of moral and religious restraint, and of the beauty as well as propriety of woman's modesty, and man's adherence to the virtues." I think that is a fair assessment. 

   Where in Looser's book is there any serious in-depth exposition of the virtues of any of the Porter sisters' books, their literary merit, their seriousness of theme, originality, power, or anything else that can justify her claim that they had "blazing genius"? Have I missed something?

     Putting aside this sales talk, undoubtedly Professor Looser has found and researched a considerable body of the Porter family letters that are of interest to scholars of the literature and history of the Regency period. The two sisters, Anna Maria and Jane, and their brother Robert Ker Porter (a painter, possibly the most talented of all of them) led eventful lives, went into society, and met prominent people. All this is worth investigating. There are things to learn here, and there are instances where light is shed on matters of some interest.

    I went to look at her book because it contains a chapter entitled, "Champagne, Orange Juice, and the Margravine: Maria's Year of Luxury and Love (1809)" -- about how Maria Porter went to stay with Elizabeth Craven in 1809, and fell in love with her youngest son, Keppel.

   The widowed Margravine, as she was by then, did have a habit of taking people under her wing and had always liked to encourage women writers (Madame de Vaucluse and Sophie de Tott being notable examples). She seems to have initially encouraged a match between Maria and Keppel as she thought his natural son, Augustus, needed a mother. Maria's sojourn ended badly, as Keppel did not propose, and Maria returned home disappointed. Looser reveals from the correspondence that Maria's other motive for staying there was to try to persuade the Margravine to give or lend her brother Robert one thousand pounds. She did not agree to this, and actually she was far less rich than Looser supposes (the following year she had to hold a public auction of her valuables). This sheds a different light on the abrupt conclusion of the visit, as when the Margravine discovered a letter in which Maria was describing her as "a cruel mother...and half mad" amongst other insults, she was furious and told her to leave immediately. 

    Such a reaction becomes more understandable when we realize that Maria had been not only taking advantage of very generous hospitality for twelve months (she had been taken to a ball at the Duke of  Norfolk's castle and a seaside holiday among other things) but was also blatantly scrounging money. A thousand pounds was an enormous sum, equivalent to at least fifty thousand pounds today, possibly much more. And the Margravine had given Robert money before, twice saving him from going to a debtors' prison. (Looser admits this in passing, after giving a very disparaging account of her.)

   Maria wrote many letters to Jane in which she said that she was sure that Keppel was in love with her and wanted to marry her. Looser seems to give some credence to this, although she admits at the end of the chapter that Keppel and his friend William Gell later had a "same-sex relationship". It had actually begun two years earlier and while flirting with Maria, Keppel was also writing about her in a vein of gentle mockery to another friend, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. He and his sophisticated circle regarded the Porter sisters and their books as slightly ridiculous. And who is to say they were wrong? Maria flattered herself that Keppel was only prevented from proposing to her by his mother's opposition, whereas it seems to me more likely that he was using her as a screen. Looser also believes Maria's claim that the letter that enraged her hostess had been opened after sealing rather than left lying around. 

    The chapter is full of minor inaccuracies such as saying that the Margravine was the "third daughter of an earl" and repeating the fairly common claim that the Margrave of Anspach "sold his margraviate to the King of Prussia". Not at all, and that would not have been legal. What he did was to abdicate in favour of the next legal heir, his nephew, who also happened to be King of Prussia. Looser says that Craven got the title "morganatic Princess Berkeley". There is no such title and you can't be a morganatic princess. "Morganatic" refers to a type of marriage recognised in some  countries where the wife of a royal personage does not share his rank. It does not exist in English law and was never relevant to Elizabeth Craven. Her mistake has already been copied into another more recent book, Women Writers in the Romantic Age, by John Claiborne Isbell,  (2025). 

     Elsewhere, Looser asserts that the Margrave, before he died, had wished to leave Keppel an independent fortune, but his mother had "quashed" that. I wonder what her source is for that. In fact, the Margrave lived on an annuity from Prussia, only intermittently and imperfectly paid, so it is difficult to see how he could have done this. Even Benham was not fully paid for until several years after his death. Looser blames Keppel's mother for discouraging him from pursuing any profession, but the fact was that she had genuine concerns about his health. That was why she allowed him to travel so frequently to the Mediterranean, although she missed him desperately. Keppel actually had a small income and an estate inherited from the 6th Baron Craven.

   Looser says that the Margravine was on bad terms with all her children, and that her eldest son, William, Lord Craven, "Distrusted and disliked her". In fact, a couple of weeks after Miss Porter had departed from Brandenburgh House in December 1809, William arrived, with his wife Louisa, to stay for a fortnight. In later life he even visited his mother in Naples. Her second son, the high-spirited Berkeley, was often with her taking part in theatricals and bringing his friends to stay.

    Looser suggests that Maria's novel Coming Out, published in 1828, alludes to her romantic disappointment with Keppel. In it, Alicia Barry, a young woman of "coveted but fatal beauty", gets engaged to the young and rich Lord St Lawrence; she reluctantly breaks it off because of her family's bankruptcy and his improper involvement with another woman. He loves her but confesses his moral weakness. Alicia is heartbroken but eventually marries a devoted clergyman. Lady Donnington, a rich and bossy society hostess who introduces Alicia to Lord St Lawrence and is very proud of making the match, has a name that connects her to Benham and the Margravine, without any resemblance in detail. It may well be that Maria intended a connection, but the story does not enthrall, being (in my personal view) banal, monotonous, verbose and sentimental. It is full of blushing cheeks, trembling hands, and tears welling from downcast eyes.

      At one point Porter writes:-
"Beauty ought not to be over-valued nor dear for its own sake; but it has its charms, and when it has belonged to a face we love from worthier motives, it cannot be missed there without regret." Who does not feel wiser, better and enriched after reading this?

   If you can judge a book by what it says about a topic of which you have specialist knowledge, then I'm sorry to say that I get the impression that Looser's book is pretty dodgy. I am of course flattered by the signs that she has made use of my own biography of Elizabeth Craven, (mentioning for example the attribution of Letters to her Son and quoting exactly the same passages from Keppel's diary) though I am surprised that somebody whom we are told is "Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University" is not aware of the convention that such borrowing should be acknowledged in footnotes or at least in the bibliography. In fact, as far as I can see from the Ebook version that I accessed, in the Bodleian library, Looser's book has no bibliography. This is very worrying. How many other people's work has she made use of without acknowledgement?

    Altogether this is a book to be read cautiously, with many reservations, and while it provides the first detailed biography of the Porter sisters, it offers inadequate evidence for its big claims for them as writers.