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
Textual Production Caroline Norton
In 1832 CN began editing the newly-launched La Belle Assemblée; or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine.
Chedzoy, Alan. A Scandalous Woman: The Story of Caroline Norton. Allison and Busby.
88
Known both as La Belle Assemblée (which had first appeared in 1806 but had petered out) and...
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...
Textual Production Elizabeth Gaskell
The idea of self-improvement through writing and reading correlates to the strong emphasis in EG 's fiction on education and the impact of environment. This was undoubtedly influenced by a Unitarian intellectual background indebted to...
Textual Production Caroline Norton
This was published for its first two years in France, Germany, and the United States, and then from 1836 onwards in England. Among CN 's signed contributors were Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley
Textual Production Barbara Hofland
Mary Russell Mitford commented on this letter. Holford's modern biographer knew of no surviving copy of this work; OCLC lists only a single copy, at Cornell University .
Butts, Dennis. Mistress of our Tears, A Literary and Bibliographical Study of Barbara Hofland. Scolar Press.
70
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Textual Production Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton
Edward Bulwer 's hugely successful The Last Days of Pompeii appeared, as by the author of Pelham, in three volumes; another historical novel, Rienzi (based on the play of the same name by Mary Russell Mitford
Textual Production Barbara Hofland
BH 's correspondence with Mary Russell Mitford (whose earliest surviving letter dates from 25 May 1820) reveals her as an active and eclectic reader. The two women exchanged responses to Anna Maria Porter , Amelia Opie
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
Textual Production Geraldine Jewsbury
While working for the Athenæum, she reviewed works by literary figures including Mary Russell Mitford , Elizabeth Gaskell , Harriet Beecher Stowe , Camilla Crosland , Anthony Trollope , George Eliot , Julia Kavanagh
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...
Textual Production Frances Trollope
Some of FT 's letters were published by A. G. K. L'Estrange in The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford in 1882.
L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, editor. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents. Hurst and Blackett.
1: 159ff
Textual Production Alice Meynell
She often used this column to address the works of literary women of the past. She judged Jane Austen inferior to Charlotte Brontë , accepting Brontë's opinion that Austen lacked what she, by implication, possessed:...
Textual Production Christian Isobel Johnstone
She included her own work, along with that of Gore , Mitford , Howitt , Mrs Fraser , and Catherine Crowe . Several editions appeared, up to an eleventh in 1862.
Feminist Companion Archive.
Textual Production Betty Miller
From this followed the commission to edit a volume of hithertoto unpublished letters from Elizabeth Barrett to Miss Mitford .
Miller, Sarah, and Betty Miller. “Introduction”. On the Side of the Angels, Virago, p. vii - xviii.
xvi
The result was Elizabeth Barrett to Miss Mitford: The Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett...
Textual Production Elizabeth Isabella Spence
The title-page quotes Mary Russell Mitford 's recent Blanche of Castile (in Narrative Poems on the Female Character). EIS dedicated her work to Lady Hamlyn-Williams (Diana Anne née Whitaker, wife of the second baronet)...

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.