Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
Mary Russell Mitford
called this novel an attempt to portray the poet Byron
, recognisable through several anecdotes familiarly told about him, in very black and exaggerated colors. She maintained that Joanna Baillie
, as...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
EBB
's ballads have proved of particular interest to feminist critics. Dorothy Mermin
argues that in this apparently most innocent, retrogressive, and sentimental of female genres, she was exploring what was to become her central...
She may, however, have been building on another's opinion, for the Athenæum reviewer found abundant...
Literary responses
Amelia Opie
Mary Russell Mitford
, about to begin this book in its year of publication, summed AO
up as clever and good-natured but predictable and not for the fastidious. She knew the recipe for Madeline...
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
Literary responses
Amelia Opie
Opie's Tales of Real Life was praised by Mary Russell Mitford
.
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: 188
Literary responses
Felicia Hemans
Maria Jane Jewsbury
had already begun the idealisation of FH
in 1830 with her portrait of Egeria in The History of a Nonchalant: a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent woman—the Italy...
Literary responses
Amelia Opie
AO
's novels, which formed a comparatively minor part of her output, had an impact beyond the rest of her work. Literary historian Gary Kelly
notes that when they were new they commanded among the...
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...
Literary responses
Fanny Kemble
In its review the Athenæum placed Kemble in the ranks with Joanna Baillie
and Mary Russell Mitford
, though her published original contributions in this form are only three—her school-girl essay which became the play...
Literary responses
Mary Wollstonecraft
MW
's posthumous vilification was followed by a long period during which her name was considered barely fit to be mentioned. Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
borrowed her title The Wrongs of Woman in 1843; Maria Jane Jewsbury
Literary responses
Caroline Herschel
In the beginning CH
's reputation was usually judged more as that of a woman and a sister than as that of a scientist. Frances Burney
's admiration and delight was directed at her as...
Literary responses
Henrietta Euphemia Tindal
Mary Russell Mitford
particularly praised The Infant Bridal for its pictorial qualities: she said it might be transferred to canvas without altering a word.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. R. Bentley.
Readers were often unable to distinguish between the two Howitts. Mary Russell Mitford
, however, reading The Book of the Seasons (published under William
's name alone, in 1831, at both London and Philadelphia), rightly...
Literary responses
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
The review in the Critical made nostalgic reference to pleasure in Morgan's The Wild Irish Girl, and continued: As a national writer, we cannot too much admire her sentiments; and, as a descriptive writer...
