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 Emma Parker
The title-page mentions three of her previous works and quotes Mary Russell Mitford on the topic of romantic Spain.
Textual Production Mary Howitt
Early in her marriage, living in Nottingham, MH wrote both poetry and prose. Her early poem Wild Crocus in Nottingham Meadows treats a sight which she also, in February 1835, described lyrically in a letter...
Textual Production Barbarina Brand, Baroness Dacre
BBBD was a conscientious and entertaining letter-writer with a large circle of correspondents. The Plymouth and West Devon Record Office holds a collection of her correspondence from the 1840s with Frances Parker, Countess of Morley
Textual Production Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
This work involved her in finding—and engaging in voluminous correspondence with—contributors (who often were or became her personal friends), such as Anna Maria Hall , Felicia Hemans , Amelia Opie , Mary Russell Mitford ,...
Textual Production Henrietta Euphemia Tindal
HET contributed the introduction to Henry Chorley 's edition of Mary Russell Mitford 's letters (published by March 1872) and her Story of Kitty Canham appeared in July 1880 in Temple Bar.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2315 (1872): 297
Tindal, Henrietta Euphemia. Rhymes and Legends. Richard Bentley and Son.
xi
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press.
Textual Production Mary Howitt
This venture seems to have sprung from William's brief, financially damaging involvement in The People's Journal, 1846-8, whose chaotic business practices were a serious handicap to its programme for rendering workers prudent, sober, independent...
Textual Production Catherine Fanshawe
In 1793 CF corresponded with William Cowper 's friend Lady Hesketh , and through her, with Cowper himself. Mary Russell Mitford concurs in calling CF an excellent letter-writer.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. R. Bentley.
1: 251
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 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 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 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

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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.