Mary Berry

16 March 1763 - 21 November 1852

Standard Name: Berry, Mary

Used Form: Miss Berry

Used Form: the editor of Madame Du Deffand's letters

MB participated in the English literary scene from the 1780s to the 1820s. She edited collections of letters, had a play produced and published, wrote two books comparing the social and cultural climates of England and France, and was a lifelong diary-keeper and correspondent. From the point of view of literary history, her most interesting achievment is perhaps a side effect of her editorial projects: recovery of life-writing by seventeenth-century women.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Cultural formation	Anne Damer	Literary historian Andrew Elfenbein argues that these attacks formed part of a general assault on the morals of the aristocracy. AD stepped up her artistic activities during the next decade, and this rendered her liable...
Cultural formation	Anne Damer	The painter and diarist Joseph Faringdon commented on AD 's wearing men's clothes, as well as on the ecstacy of meeting and the agony of parting between her and the two MissBerry s. Lanser, Susan Sniader. “’Pulled from the Straight’: Dorothy Wordsworth, Anne Lister, and the Poetics of Irregularity”. British Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Women Conference, Lawrence, KS, 16 Mar. 2001.
Education	Lady Rachel Russell	Mary Berry , who wrote that LRR spent her youth in those occupations which it has been agreed to call the education of females, Berry, Mary, and Lady Rachel Russell. Some Account of the Life of Rachael Wriothesley Lady Russell. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819. x was misplacing her feminist indignation. It has been said that...
Family and Intimate relationships	Anne Damer	Whatever the truth or falsehood of the Elizabeth Farren story or all the hostile printed stories, AD was seriously in love—as her notebooks full of extracts of letters record—with her friend Mary Berry . The...
Family and Intimate relationships	Camilla Crosland	CC 's mother was born Sarah Wright . She was descended from the Berry family (that of woman of letters Mary Berry and her sister Agnes ). When her husband died she began running a...
Family and Intimate relationships	Anne Damer	Mary Berry (whose social and financial position was precarious) wrote to AD in a panic to enjoin caution in face of an apparent public charge that they were lovers. Elfenbein, Andrew. Romantic Genius: The Prehistory of a Homosexual Role. Columbia University Press, 1999. 104, 105
Friends, Associates	Joanna Baillie	Through her friendship with Mary Berry , JB met Germaine de Staël . Carhart, Margaret S. The Life and Work of Joanna Baillie. Reprint of 1923, Archon Books, 1970. 45
Friends, Associates	Anne Damer	AD 's wide circle of friends included Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , Lady Melbourne , Joanna Baillie , Sarah Siddons , the Berrysisters , the dramatist Lady Elizabeth Craven (formerly Berkeley, later Margravine of Anspach)
Friends, Associates	Joanna Baillie	Over the course of her long life JB made dozens of well-loved friends, many of them either professional writers like herself or else writing amateurs. They included Lucy Aikin , Mary Berry , Eliza Fletcher
Friends, Associates	Elizabeth Rigby	ER appeared in public as Mrs Eastlake for the first time at the house of Lady Davy , where she was introduced to Augusta Ada Byron (Byron's daughter) and to Thackeray . At London parties...
Friends, Associates	Ann Radcliffe	In later years AR was a friend of Mary Berry . Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press, 1999. 229-30
Friends, Associates	Maria Edgeworth	By now ME was a celebrity, and could count on being introduced to the local literati when she travelled. On this visit to London she finally met Etiénne Dumont , the utilitarian, with whom she...
Friends, Associates	Catherine Fanshawe	CF 's friends included other highly literate middle-class women such as Mary Berry and Anne Grant in Edinburgh. (Her friendship with Grant was maintained entirely by correspondence—she and her sisters hoped to visit Edinburgh in...
Friends, Associates	Elizabeth Hervey	EH 's probably full social life has left few traces. She is mentioned twice among Mary Berry 's circle in 1791, and Berry paid her the oblique compliment of calling her Mrs. Pompoustown Hervey after...
Friends, Associates	Lady Eleanor Butler	Among their many visitors (apart from the local gentry, with whom they duly established links), close friends included Anna Seward , Henrietta Maria Bowdler (who wrote mock-flirtatiously of LEB as her veillard [sic] or old...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Berry, Mary. A Comparative View of the Social Life of England and France. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1828.

Berry, Mary. Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry. Editor Lewis, Lady Theresa, Longmans, Green, 1865, 3 vols.

Du Deffand, Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise. Letters of the Marquise Du Deffand. Editor Berry, Mary, Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1810, 4 vols.

Berry, Mary. Social Life in England and France. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1831.

Berry, Mary, and Lady Rachel Russell. Some Account of the Life of Rachael Wriothesley Lady Russell. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819.

Berry, Mary, and Agnes Berry. The Berry Papers. Editor Melville, Lewis, John Lane, 1914.

Berry, Mary. The Fashionable Friends. J. Ridgway, 1802.

Walpole, Horace. Works. Editor Berry, Mary, G. G. and J. Robinson and J. Edwards, 1798, 5 vols.