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
Literary responses Mary Bryan
The novel's publication was listed in the Edinburgh Review 49 (1829): 529, together with Scott's Anne of Geierstein.
The Edinburgh Review. A. and C. Black.
49 (1829): 528-9
The Sun linked the setting not with Crabbe but with Mary Russell Mitford
Literary responses Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
The virtues of this powerful Irish novel were not fully appreciated in England. Mary Russell Mitford thought that Morgan would be all right without the politics: she would be worth reading and praising if only...
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...
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 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 Mary Howitt
Mary Russell Mitford confided to Elizabeth Barrett , who had been charmed by The Neighbours, that she thought the translations' lack of popularity a sign of the poor taste of English novel-readers. Ah! dearest...
Literary responses Sarah Harriet Burney
The Critical review began predictably: The very name of Burney is sufficient to excite the most agreeable sensations in all the lovers of novel reading;
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
4th ser. 2 (1812) : 519
but it cited...
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, 1870, 2 vols.
1: 188
Occupation Barbara Hofland
Mary Russell Mitford tells an amusing story of BH 's charitable philanthropy failing in its object. Hofland had been to great trouble and expense to help a starving male poet with a sick mother. She...
Occupation Sarah Tytler
As regards the typical feminine curriculum, ST resented the tradition of mandatory music teaching—of the piano—to young women, and the slight to other branches of education in the extravagant favour shown to one branch.
Tytler, Sarah. Three Generations. J. Murray, 1911.
235-6
Occupation Honoré de Balzac
Mary Russell Mitford translated some of Balzac's works. His oeuvre influenced many writers, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon , Storm Jameson , and Natalie Clifford Barney , and has attracted criticism from Anita Brookner .
Occupation Thomas Holcroft
Working as a stable-boy, being entrusted with the management of one of that race of creatures that were the most admired and beloved by me,
qtd. in
Holcroft, Thomas, and William Hazlitt. The Life of Thomas Holcroft. Editor Colby, Elbridge, Constable, 1925, 2 vols.
1: 52
seemed too good to be true. Though it...
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...
Occupation Fanny Kemble
Later in 1830, when she acted Calista in Nicholas Rowe 's The Fair Penitent, Thomas Noon Talfourd told Mary Russell Mitfordthat, at a distance from the stage, he could almost have imagined her...
Other Life Event Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett 's dog Flush, a highly-valued companion given her by Mary Russell Mitford , was stolen and held for two days before being returned for a ransom of five guineas.
Forster, Margaret. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography. Grafton, 1990.
100, 117-18
Browning, Robert, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Brownings’ Correspondence. Editors Kelley, Philip et al., Wedgestone Press, 1984–2025, 14 vols. to date.
7: xii

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