Eleanor Anne Porden (
July 141795-February 221825) was a
British Romantic poet and the first wife of the explorer
John Franklin.
She was born in
London, the younger surviving daughter of the
architect William Porden and his wife Mary Plowman. (Another sister and brother had died in infancy.) Her mother was an invalid, and after her older sister's marriage, she nursed her from
1809 until her death in
1819.
An intelligent young woman, educated privately at home, and interested in the arts and sciences, Porden attracted attention for her poetry from an early age. Her first major work, the
allegorical The Veils; or the Triumph of Constancy, was published in
1815, when she was just twenty - although she had written it at the age of sixteen. She prefaced it with an introduction which gives a clear indication of her interests and education:
:
The author, who considers herself a pupil of the Royal Institution, being at that time attending the Lectures given in Albemarle-Street, on Chemistry, Geology, Natural History, and Botany, by Sir Humphry Davy, Mr. Brand, Dr. Roger (sic, for
Roget)
, Sir James Edward Smith, and other eminent men, she was induced to combine these subjects with her story; and though her knowledge of them was in a great measure orally acquired, and therefore cannot pretend to be extensive or profound, yet, as it was derived from the best teachers, she hopes it will seldom be found incorrect.
In
1818, she met her future husband,
John Franklin, on board his ship, HMS Trent, before his departure on
David Buchan's British Naval North Polar Expedition. This inspired a short poem,
The Arctic Expeditions.
During Franklin's absence, she researched and wrote a historical
epic poem,
Cœur de Lion, or The Third Crusade. A poem, in sixteen books. This was published in two volumes in
1822, with a dedication to the king,
George IV. Based on historical research, and also on mediæval romances, it recounts the adventures of
Richard I of England on the
Third Crusade. Other prominent characters include
Guy of Lusignan, Isabella of Jerusalem (portrayed as a
femme fatale), and
Conrad of Montferrat, whom she depicts as a flawed, tragic
Byronic hero, in contrast with the unequivocally hostile treatment by her contemporary
Walter Scott in
The Talisman. She also depicts Richard's former fiancée,
Alasia of France, fighting for the Saracens as the female knight Zorayda, and being mortally wounded by her own son (fathered by
Henry II). Indeed, despite such fanciful episodes, strongly influenced by
Torquato Tasso, her poem has more historical content than Scott's better-known novel. Her sources included the works of
Joseph François Michaud and
Charles Mills.
Also in 1822, her father died, and Franklin returned from the
Arctic. She married him on
August 191823. She made her acceptance of his proposal conditional on his acceptance of her continuing her career as a poet after their marriage. She wrote to him six months before the wedding:
:
it was the pleasure of Heaven to bestow those talents on me, and it was my father's pride to cultivate them to the utmost of his power. I should therefore be guilty of a double dereliction of duty in abandoning their exercise.
She gave birth to their daughter, Eleanor Isabella, on
June 3 1824. Childbirth accelerated the advance of the
tuberculosis from which she suffered, and she died on
February 22 1825, aged twenty-nine. She had encouraged her husband not let his concerns for her health impede his career, and he had set off on the second Arctic Land expedition shortly before her death. On his return, he married her friend
Jane Griffin. 
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