British Fiction, 1800–1829

PORTER, Jane. Pastor's Fire-Side, The (1817)

Anecdotal Records
Journal Entry by Mary Shelley.
19 Aug 1817.
I am confined teusday [sic] 2nd. Read Rhoda—Pastor’s Fire [179/180] Side—Missionary—Wild Irish girl—The Anaconda. Glenarvon—1st Vol Percy’s Northern Antiquities—Bargain with Lackington concerning Frankenstein […].
Source: The Journals of Mary Shelley 1814–1844, ed. by Paula R. Feldman & Diana Scott-Kilvert, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), I, 179–80.
Notes: On 2 Aug, Shelley gave birth to her daughter Clara Everina. She did not make journal entries from 1–18 Aug and so this entry summarizes her reading during that period. Frances Jacson’s Rhoda is EN2 1816: 35; Owenson’s Missionary and Wild Irish Girl are EN2 1811: 61 and 1806: 54; M. G. Lewis’s ‘Anaconda’ is in vol. 2 of Romantic Tales (EN2 1808: 72; Lamb’s Glenarvon is EN2 1816:40; and Shelley’s Frankenstein, for which she was bargaining with the publisher at this time, is EN2 1818: 57.

Memoirs by Samuel Carter Hall.
[n.d.].
The ‘Scottish Chiefs’ was Jane Porter’s most famous work. Who reads it now? Who knows even by name ‘Thaddeus of Warsaw?’ or who can talk about ‘The Pastor’s Fireside?’ Yet seventy years ago those works were of such account that the first Napoleon, on political grounds, paid Jane Porter the high compliment of prohibiting the circulation of ‘Thaddeus of Warsaw’ in France.
Source: S. C. Hall, Retrospect of a Long Life: From 1815–1883, 2 vols (London: Bentley, 1883), II, 144.
Notes: Scottish Chiefs is EN2 1810: 68; Thaddeus of Warsaw is EN2 1803: 59.

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