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
Wealth and Poverty Amelia Opie
In the early years of their marriage Amelia and John Opie were badly off, and John was cautious about money matters.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under John Opie
It seems also that he had relations who were needy: after...
Travel Barbara Hofland
In 1818 BH paid a visit to Mary Russell Mitford , who was still living at Bertram House, near Reading in Berkshire.
L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, editor. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents. Hurst and Blackett.
1: 114
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The title piece is a lyrical drama depicting, largely in the form of a conversation between two angels, the crucifixion of Christ. Among the accompanying pieces were several on literary personages or topics: To Mary Russell Mitford
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Camilla Crosland
Since she was well-connected in London literary circles, she was able to include in her memoir recollections of time spent working with the annuals and of literary figures such as Grace Aguilar , Lady Blessington
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Ann Browne
This volume displays the melodramatic tendency of MAB 's early romantic writing, but also her serious commitment to the idea of a women's tradition in literature. The title poem features more than one Byronic hero...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Muriel Jaeger
MJ 's next chapter deals with the male counterparts of the previous chapter's examples (Frederic Lamb , but also Dugald Stewart and Henry Brougham ), setting the Society for the Suppression of Vice against...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Harriet Martineau
Among her subjects are Lady Byron (an occasion for HM to deplore Byron 's conduct and influence), Mary Berry , Mary Russell Mitford , Charlotte Brontë , Jane Marcet , Amelia Opie , Mary Somerville
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 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 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 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 Ann Batten Cristall
The publisher Joseph Johnson issued by subscription ABC 's Poetical Sketches: an important text in women's Romanticism.
Her title was the same as that of William Blake 's first publication, 1783. Critic Richard C. Sha
Textual Production Susanna Moodie
Susanna Strickland (later SM ) sent Mary Russell Mitford a poetic eulogy; of herself she wrote humbly: Never for me will lyre like thine be strung.
L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, editor. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as Recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents. Hurst and Blackett.
1: 196-7
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)...
Textual Production Susanna Moodie
A family friend, James Black, took the manuscript to London where he sold it for ten pounds.
Peterman, Michael. Susanna Moodie: A Life. ECW Press.
30
At an early age she told Mary Russell Mitford : A desire for fame appears to me...

Timeline

11 July 1798: Thomas Green reported (not favourably) on...

Building item

11 July 1798

Thomas Green reported (not favourably) on Miss Linwood's Exhibition of Needle Work, of works imitating famous paintings such as a Raphael madonna.

1825: Alexander Dyce, then a twenty-seven-year-old...

Women writers item

1825

Alexander Dyce , then a twenty-seven-year-old reluctant clergyman, published his Specimens of British Poetesses, a project in rediscovering women's literary history.

3 June 1829: Publisher Henry Colburn went into partnership...

Writing climate item

3 June 1829

Publisher Henry Colburn went into partnership with Richard Bentley (1794 - ­1871) (who, in order to do this, had just dissolved the partnership between himself and his brother Samuel Bentley as printers).

1832: Joseph Henry Parker took over his uncle's...

Writing climate item

1832

Joseph Henry Parker took over his uncle's Oxford bookselling and publishing business; as J. H. Parker it soon became the foremost publisher of the Oxford or Tractarian Movement.

17 February 1847: The Whittington Club (named after the poor...

Building item

17 February 1847

The Whittington Club (named after the poor boy who became Lord Mayor of London) held its first meeting. Unlike traditional gentlemen's clubs, it welcomed women and lower-middle-class men.

: Mary Russell Mitford complained satirically...

Building item

Autumn1853

Mary Russell Mitford complained satirically of a Pusey ite curate in Reading, admired (to her embarrassment) by other women.

1861: A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued...

Writing climate item

1861

A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...

Texts

Mitford, Mary Russell. Atherton, and Other Tales. Hurst and Blackett, 1854.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Belford Regis; or, Sketches of a Country Town. R. Bentley, 1835.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Charles the First. John Duncombe, 1834.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Christina, the Maid of the South Seas. F. C. and J. Rivington , 1811.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Country Stories. Saunders and Otley, 1837.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Dramatic Scenes, Sonnets, and Other Poems. G. B. Whittaker, 1827.
Mitford, Mary Russell, editor. Finden’s Tableaux. C. Tilt, 1841.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Foscari. G. B. Whittaker, 1826.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Gaston de Blondeville. Hurst and Blackett, 1854.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Inez de Castro. J. Dicks, 1841.
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray et al. “Introduction”. Our Village, Macmillan, 1902, p. vii - liii.
Mitford, Mary Russell. “Introduction by the Editor”. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends, edited by Alfred Guy Kingham L’Estrange, Harper and Brothers, 1870, pp. 13-39.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Julian. G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Letters of Mary Russell Mitford, Second Series. Editor Chorley, Henry Fothergill, R. Bentley and Son, 1872.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Narrative Poems on the Female Character, in the Various Relations of Human Life. Printed by A. J. Valpy, 1813.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Our Village. Whittaker, 1832.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Poems. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1810.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. Harper and Brothers, 1852.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. R. Bentley, 1852.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Rienzi. J. Cumberland, 1828.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Sadak and Kalasrade; or, The Waters of Oblivion. Printed for the proprietor, 1835.
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Dramatic Works of Mary Russell Mitford. Hurst and Blackett, 1854.
Mitford, Mary Russell, and William Harness. The Life of Mary Mary Russell Mitford, Related in a Selection from Her Letters to Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, R. Bentley, 1870.
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.