Jane Porter (1776 - 1850)

Jane Porter (17 January 1776 – 24 May 1850) was a Scottish historical novelist and dramatist. Her novel Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) is one of the earliest examples of the historical novel, and it went through a dozen editions. Based on Polish-refugee eyewitness accounts of the doomed Polish independence struggle of the 1790s, the book was praised by Tadeusz (Thaddeus) Kościuszko, also a character in the novel. The Scottish Chiefs (1810), a novel about William Wallace, was also a success (the French version was banned by Napoleon), and it has remained popular with Scottish children. The Pastor's Fireside (1815) was a story about the later Stuarts.