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
Publishing Eleanor Anne Porden
EAP addressed a letter on the subject of Bread to the editor of the Sun in about 1817.
Porden, Eleanor Anne, and Edith M. Gell. “Letters: 1821-1824”. John Franklin’s Bride, John Murray, p. various pages.
16-17
She wrote remarkably honest and self-scrutinizing personal letters to John Franklin during their courtship. Edith Gell
Reception Jane Porter
Mary Russell Mitford declined to feel sorry for JP , who was, she said, sick . . . of her condemned play (that is since Switzerland failed). Her disease is wounded vanity.
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.
1: 341
Literary responses Jane Porter
Again her work was extremely popular. The French translation was banned by Napoleon because of its portrayal of nationalist resistance to conquest.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Mary Russell Mitford , who thought very highly of Porter, found Wallace in...
Textual Production Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR wrote a memorial preface to Poems and Music by Anne Evans in 1880. In 1892 she drew on her father 's ideas for a largely anecdotal introduction to Elizabeth Gaskell 's Cranford.
Callow, Steven D. “A Biographical Sketch of Lady Anne Thackeray Ritchie”. Virginia Woolf Quarterly, Vol.
2
, pp. 285-7.
293
Literary responses Emma Robinson
The Athenæum's reviewer, Henry Fothergill Chorley , wrote that after Mary Russell Mitford 's characterization of Cromwell in her Charles the First, we know not who has conceived of the great General better...
Cultural formation Frances Arabella Rowden
FAR came from the English middle class. She was an Anglican in religion. Mary Russell Mitford represents her as a young teacher taking a relaxed attitude to religious ideas in literary contexts (her students were...
Education Frances Arabella Rowden
Students at the school during the brief period when Rowden was a pupil included a couple of future writers: Martha Mary Butts, later Sherwood, who knew Rowden as a privileged girl in the top...
Occupation Frances Arabella Rowden
FAR was clearly a key element, perhaps the key element, in the success of the Hans Place school. She taught the general curriculum there for nearly twenty-five years, from its founding until 1818, and she...
Leisure and Society Frances Arabella Rowden
Rowden made the most of the cultural opportunities offered by London; she took pupils to attend the theatre and visit picture galleries, and continued to frequent these attractions when Mitford visited her after leaving school.
Friends, Associates Frances Arabella Rowden
Mitford introduced St Quintin and his wife to her life-story as a well-born, well-educated, and well-looking French emigrant, and a woman whom she thought French, good-natured, red-faced . . . much muffled up in shawls...
Textual Production Frances Arabella Rowden
The first canto was drafted by 7 February 1809, when Mary Russell Mitford read it and hoped it would extend to a second canto. She read its praise of a male friend as sweet as...
Literary responses Frances Arabella Rowden
Rowden's poem was reviewed by the Critical (3rd series 20 (May 1810): 112). Mary Russell Mitford read the first canto with high appreciation and admiration that increase[d] with every perusal. She expected it to rank...
Textual Production Frances Arabella Rowden
In October 1811 FAR was considering whether to undertake an English translation of Charlemagne by Lucien Bonaparte . Mary Russell Mitford suggested that they should do it jointly, dividing up the piece (she thought she...
Literary responses Lady Rachel Russell
As love-letters, they made a great and immediate impression on their readers. Yet later this year Mary Russell Mitford wrote of LRR with dislike. Mitford found her heavy, preachy, and prosy. As a writer, she...
Education Mary Martha Sherwood
St Quintin was a sophisticated educator who had been French Ambassador in London, and who published pedagogical books which took into consideration the age and development of the children for whom they were designed. He...

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