Forgotten today, Jane Porter (1775-1850) was one of the most popular British novelists of her time. Her historical romances were widely admired and remained in print for a century. Like so many other readers and writers, Porter fell under the spell of the era’s greatest celebrity and most popular poet, Lord Byron. As the scandals piled up around Byron, Porter remained a stalwart defender of his innocence--at least until Byron abandoned Britain. This paper will offer a biographical introduction to Porter and argue for her importance in the development of the historical novel. It will then use Porter’s unpublished letters to describe a memorable near-encounter with Byron, and to examine Byron’s subsequent presence in Porter’s writings. This biographical episode gives us a fascinating glimpse into the world of Romantic celebrity and the era’s imaginative engagement with Lord Byron.

Thomas McLean is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Otago. He is the editor of Further Letters of Joanna Baillie (2010) and the author of The Other East and Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Imagining Poland and the Russian Empire (forthcoming 2011). He is currently working on a critical biography of the nineteenth-century British novelists Jane and Anna Maria Porter and their brother, the artist, traveler and diplomat Sir Robert Ker Porter.