Mary Russell Mitford

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Standard Name: Mitford, Mary Russell
Birth Name: Mary Russell Mitford
MRM , poet, playwright, editor, letter-writer, memoirist, and—in just one work—novelist, is best known for her sketches of rural life, especially those in the successive volumes of Our Village (whose first appeared in 1824). Her greatest success came when, under the pressure of her father's inexhaustible capacity for running up debt, she turned from the respected genres of poetry and plays to work at something more popular and remunerative.
Painting of Mary Russell Mitford by John Lucas, c. 1853, based on another by Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1824, which was disliked for its assertive look. Here an oval frame is painted in; Mitford wears a white ruffled cap around her face, a white collar pinned with a cameo, a grey gown and brown shawl.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Grace Aguilar
The central character is the undowered girl Florence Leslie—so called because of her birth in Italy—whose high-minded principles have been fuelled by indiscriminate
Aguilar, Grace. Woman’s Friendship. D. Appleton and Company.
13
reading in history, poetry, and romance at an early age...
Literary responses Grace Aguilar
This must be the volume of tales of which Mary Russell Mitford , reading them in June 1853 after the author's death, wrote: How affecting they are! And how healthy and true is the pathos—springing...
Literary responses Jane Austen
Mary Russell Mitford found JA 's heroine pert and worldly.
Fergus, Jan. “The Professional Woman Writer”. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, edited by Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster, Cambridge University Press.
20
Jane, Lady Davy (wife of the eminent scientist), who confessed that with an exception for Maria Edgeworth she preferred old favourites to new...
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
The Chief Justice of Ceylon, Sir Alexander Johnstone , asked that two of JB 's last plays be translated into Singalese.One—The Bride, A Tragedy (published in summer 1828), had a Singalese subject.
Quarterly Review. J. Murray.
38 (1828): 602
Occupation Honoré de Balzac
Mary Russell Mitford translated some of Balzac's works. His oeuvre influenced many writers, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon , Storm Jameson , and Natalie Clifford Barney , and has attracted criticism from Anita Brookner .
Friends, Associates Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
Her many literary friendships, maintained in part by correspondence, included those with Joanna Baillie and Mary Russell Mitford (who first met each other in her drawing-room), Catherine Fanshawe , and Mary Tighe (with whom she...
Textual Production Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
BBBD was a conscientious and entertaining letter-writer with a large circle of correspondents. The Plymouth and West Devon Record Office holds a collection of her correspondence from the 1840s with Frances Parker, Countess of Morley
Literary responses Anna Maria Bennett
Mary Russell Mitford read the Beggar Girl with delight as a schoolgirl in Chelsea, liking it not only for the character and the liveliness, but for the abundant story—incident toppling after incident; all sufficiently natural...
Friends, Associates Caroline Bowles
Talk about the conflict at Greta Hall circulated through England's literary circles. Henry Crabb Robinson , Sarah Burney , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , and Mary Russell Mitford were all privy to this gossip.
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
4
Literary responses Caroline Bowles
A few months after publication, The Birth-Day was read with very much pleasure by the William WordsworthWordsworth clan.
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
122
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mary Russell Mitford discussed it in an exchange of letters. While Mitford thought...
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Ann Browne
Mary Ann Browne married (after some delay and difficulty, according to Mary Russell Mitford ) James Gray .
Archives of the Royal Literary Fund, 1790-1918.
Residence Mary Ann Browne
In her early twenties MAB moved with her family to a house in Isleworth which was within easy reach of London. Mary Russell Mitford wrote later that MAB had been taken up by London society...
Friends, Associates Mary Ann Browne
MAB had already met L. E. L. and Mary Russell Mitford .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
She now met the Chorley family, Shelton Mackenzie of the Dublin University Magazine, and other figures in Liverpool literary society. She presumably...
Literary responses Mary Ann Browne
The Monthly Review treated her with teacherly firmness, criticising her imagery and admonishing her not to confuse sparklings of youthful fancy with the genuine, concentric fire of imagination.
Blain, Virginia. “’Thou with Earth’s Music Answerest to the Sky’: Felicia Hemans, Mary Anne Browne, and the Myth of Poetic Sisterhood”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
2
, No. 3, pp. 251-69.
260
Mary Russell Mitford later recalled with...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Ann Browne
This volume displays the melodramatic tendency of MAB 's early romantic writing, but also her serious commitment to the idea of a women's tradition in literature. The title poem features more than one Byronic hero...

Timeline

11 July 1798: Thomas Green reported (not favourably) on...

Building item

11 July 1798

Thomas Green reported (not favourably) on Miss Linwood's Exhibition of Needle Work, of works imitating famous paintings such as a Raphael madonna.

1825: Alexander Dyce, then a twenty-seven-year-old...

Women writers item

1825

Alexander Dyce , then a twenty-seven-year-old reluctant clergyman, published his Specimens of British Poetesses, a project in rediscovering women's literary history.

3 June 1829: Publisher Henry Colburn went into partnership...

Writing climate item

3 June 1829

Publisher Henry Colburn went into partnership with Richard Bentley (1794 - ­1871) (who, in order to do this, had just dissolved the partnership between himself and his brother Samuel Bentley as printers).

1832: Joseph Henry Parker took over his uncle's...

Writing climate item

1832

Joseph Henry Parker took over his uncle's Oxford bookselling and publishing business; as J. H. Parker it soon became the foremost publisher of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement.

17 February 1847: The Whittington Club (named after the poor...

Building item

17 February 1847

The Whittington Club (named after the poor boy who became Lord Mayor of London) held its first meeting. Unlike traditional gentlemen's clubs, it welcomed women and lower-middle-class men.

: Mary Russell Mitford complained satirically...

Building item

Autumn1853

Mary Russell Mitford complained satirically of a Pusey ite curate in Reading, admired (to her embarrassment) by other women.

1861: A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued...

Writing climate item

1861

A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...

Texts

Mitford, Mary Russell. Atherton, and Other Tales. Hurst and Blackett, 1854.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Belford Regis; or, Sketches of a Country Town. R. Bentley, 1835.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Charles the First. John Duncombe, 1834.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Christina, the Maid of the South Seas. F. C. and J. Rivington , 1811.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Country Stories. Saunders and Otley, 1837.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Dramatic Scenes, Sonnets, and Other Poems. G. B. Whittaker, 1827.
Mitford, Mary Russell, editor. Finden’s Tableaux. C. Tilt, 1841.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Foscari. G. B. Whittaker, 1826.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Gaston de Blondeville. Hurst and Blackett, 1854.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Inez de Castro. J. Dicks, 1841.
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray et al. “Introduction”. Our Village, Macmillan, 1902, p. vii - liii.
Mitford, Mary Russell. “Introduction by the Editor”. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends, edited by Alfred Guy Kingham L’Estrange, Harper and Brothers, 1870, pp. 13-39.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Julian. G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Letters of Mary Russell Mitford, Second Series. Editor Chorley, Henry Fothergill, R. Bentley and Son, 1872.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Narrative Poems on the Female Character, in the Various Relations of Human Life. Printed by A. J. Valpy, 1813.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Our Village. Whittaker, 1832.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Poems. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1810.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. Harper and Brothers, 1852.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. R. Bentley, 1852.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Rienzi. J. Cumberland, 1828.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Sadak and Kalasrade; or, The Waters of Oblivion. Printed for the proprietor, 1835.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Dramatic Works of Mary Russell Mitford. Hurst and Blackett, 1854.
Mitford, Mary Russell, and William Harness. The Life of Mary Mary Russell Mitford, Related in a Selection from Her Letters to Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, R. Bentley, 1870.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870.