author
Charlotte (Charlotte Endymion) Porter
1857–1942
A pioneering editor, translator, and critic, she helped create one of America’s earliest and longest-running poetry journals. Her work brought Shakespeare, the Brownings, and international literature to a wider audience.
1 Audiobook
Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies
by Charlotte (Charlotte Endymion) Porter, Helen A. (Helen Archibald) Clarke
About the author
Born in Towanda, Pennsylvania, in 1857, Charlotte Endymion Porter was an American poet, translator, literary critic, and editor. She studied at Wells College and later at the Sorbonne, and she went on to build a career around literature at a time when women were still fighting for a place in the publishing world.
She is best remembered as the cofounder and coeditor of Poet Lore, founded in 1889 with Helen A. Clarke. The magazine became an important home for poetry, criticism, and translations, and Porter also edited or coedited major editions of Shakespeare, Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Her writing and editorial work helped connect American readers with both classic English literature and voices from abroad.
Porter spent much of her professional life in close collaboration with Clarke, and together they left a lasting mark on literary culture. She died in 1942, but her influence lives on through Poet Lore and through the serious, wide-ranging literary standards she helped champion.