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
Family and Intimate relationships Amelia Opie
He was also lame. According to Mary Russell Mitfordall was arranged and the time fixed for the wedding. It went off on agreement, because each had enough to live on [poorly and singly]...
Friends, Associates Anna Jane Vardill
While she lived in London AJV moved in culturally active circles. She later described the poet Eleanor Anne Porden (who lived not far away) as her dear friend, and was one of those who...
Friends, Associates Camilla Crosland
CC 's friends and acquaintances were varying and numerous. In her youth the radical politician John Cartwright was a neighbour. Her literary work as an adult led to the formation of a number of lasting...
Friends, Associates Mary Howitt
In Nottingham MH met L. E. L. and perhaps Elizabeth Fry . She was visited by Mary and Dora Wordsworth (wife and daughter of the poet), and later she and her husband stayed with the...
Friends, Associates Henrietta Euphemia Tindal
Friends with whom she maintained contact by correspondence included her neighbour Mary Russell Mitford , who commented to Elizabeth Barrett Browning that HET had been wrong in her theory about the authorship of Jane Eyre...
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...
Friends, Associates Hester Lynch Piozzi
Mary Russell Mitford (who did not know HLP ) later praised her. HLP had met Mitford's teacher the future writer Frances Arabella Rowden , in Wales while Rowden struggled as a neglected, uncared for
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.
2: 244
Friends, Associates Eleanor Anne Porden
EAP met Mary Russell Mitford in summer 1822 at the London house of Mrs Vardill: presumably the mother of the Romantic poet Anna Jane Vardill .
L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, editor. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents. Hurst and Blackett.
1: 121
Vardill was a friend and associate from...
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...
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
Friends, Associates Harriet Martineau
HM 's social circle vastly expanded at this time until she knew virtually all the prominent people, particularly the political men, of her day. As she recorded in her Autobiography, however, she refused to...
Friends, Associates Barbara Hofland
BH retained at least one life-long friendship from her Sheffield or Attercliffe days: with the poet and novelist Sarah Pearson , who had been her neighbour there. Pearson's will charged Hofland with the task of...
Friends, Associates Frances Trollope
Frances's earliest friendships were forged with intelligent young women like herself, such as Marianne Gabell , a headmaster's daughter. She also socialized with older women, including Mrs George Mitford , the mother of Mary Russell Mitford
Friends, Associates Henry Peter, Baron Brougham
Brougham had a number of friends among women writers. He was at primary school in Edinburgh with Susan Ferrier (who, however, declined to acknowledge him later, probably for political reasons). His political work brought him...
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...

Timeline

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Texts

Mitford, Mary Russell. The Works of Mary Russell Mitford, Prose and Verse. James Crissy, 1841.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Watlington Hill. A. J. Valpy, 1812.