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
Family and Intimate relationships Amelia Opie
He was also lame. According to Mary Russell Mitfordall was arranged and the time fixed for the wedding. It went off on agreement, because each had enough to live on [poorly and singly]...
Education Mary Howitt
Her sister Ann had become a pupil at this school the previous year. Kilham involved the girls in visiting the poor, and her friendship with the poet James Montgomery first awoke Mary's interest in the...
Education Elizabeth Taylor
Her first school, where she went at the age of six, was a little private establishment called Leopold House, which gave a grounding in English and maths and team games.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books.
12-13
When Betty was eleven...
Education L. E. L.
This school was advanced for its time, and had educated women such as Mary Russell Mitford and Lady Caroline Lamb . Rowden was herself a writer. While there, LEL learned a great deal of French...
Education Frances Arabella Rowden
Students at the school during the brief period when Rowden was a pupil included a couple of future writers: Martha Mary Butts, later Sherwood, who knew Rowden as a privileged girl in the top...
Education Mary Martha Sherwood
St Quintin was a sophisticated educator who had been French Ambassador in London, and who published pedagogical books which took into consideration the age and development of the children for whom they were designed. He...
Education Fanny Kemble
She studied French and Italian literatures, dancing, and acting under the evangelical influence of this Englishwoman teaching in Paris.
Marshall, Dorothy. Fanny Kemble. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
17
Rowden was turning increasingly to religion, but still set store by her girls' productions of...
death Robert Southey
A year and a half before he died Mary Russell Mitford wrote of him: the mind gone—dark depression and utter failure of intellect.
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.
2: 232
He has a particularly striking monument in Poets' Corner in...
Cultural formation Frances Arabella Rowden
FAR came from the English middle class. She was an Anglican in religion. Mary Russell Mitford represents her as a young teacher taking a relaxed attitude to religious ideas in literary contexts (her students were...
Cultural formation Amelia Opie
It may be significant that this was just two months before her father's death, though her friendship with the Gurney family was also important in her decision to convert. For more than a year she...

Timeline

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Texts

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