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 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...
Literary responses Mary Howitt
Readers were often unable to distinguish between the two Howitts. Mary Russell Mitford , however, reading The Book of the Seasons (published under William 's name alone, in 1831, at both London and Philadelphia), rightly...
Literary responses Mary Howitt
This must be the book which saddened Mary Russell Mitford and Henry Chorley when they judged that it turns out to be a dead failure.
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: 175
In his obituary of MH , James Britten
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...
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 Margaret Holford
Mary Russell Mitford called this novel an attempt to portray the poet Byron , recognisable through several anecdotes familiarly told about him, in very black and exaggerated colors. She maintained that Joanna Baillie , as...
Publishing Margaret Holford
In October 1830 Margaret Hodson, formerly Holford, was solicited by Baillie for contributions to the ongoing series of prose-and-verse miscellanies edited by M. Corbett and her five sisters. (The first volume, The Odd Volume...
Reception Margaret Holford
It is clear from her correspondence with Joanna Baillie how much Margaret Holford the younger longed for success, and how much persistent energy she devoted to pursuing it. When in 1837-8 John Gibson Lockhart published...
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,
Holcroft, Thomas, and William Hazlitt. The Life of Thomas Holcroft. Editor Colby, Elbridge, Constable.
1: 52
seemed too good to be true. Though it...
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...
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 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
Literary responses Barbara Hofland
In the early 1820s BH seems to have been at the apex of her career. She was appreciated not only by her friend Mary Russell Mitford (who believed that nobody else could combine so much...
Literary responses Barbara Hofland
Mary Russell Mitford wrote to BH , You are the mistress of our tears, as Miss Austen is of our smiles, and I think you have the advantage.
Butts, Dennis. Mistress of our Tears, A Literary and Bibliographical Study of Barbara Hofland. Scolar Press.
19
Apart from somewhat overvaluing Hofland, this...
Friends, Associates Barbara Hofland
BH retained at least one life-long friendship from her Sheffield or Attercliffe days: with the poet and novelist Sarah Pearson , who had been her neighbour there. Pearson's will charged Hofland with the task of...

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