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 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
Literary responses Mary Ann Browne
The Monthly Review treated her with teacherly firmness, criticising her imagery and admonishing her not to confuse sparklings of youthful fancy with the genuine, concentric fire of imagination.
Blain, Virginia. “’Thou with Earth’s Music Answerest to the Sky’: Felicia Hemans, Mary Anne Browne, and the Myth of Poetic Sisterhood”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
2
, No. 3, pp. 251-69.
260
Mary Russell Mitford later recalled with...
Literary responses Catherine Fanshawe
Nearly twenty years after CF died, Mary Russell Mitford 's Recollections of a Literary Life supplied the first public comment on her; the publication also included four poems by Fanshawe that had previously appeared in...
Literary responses Caroline Bowles
A few months after publication, The Birth-Day was read with very much pleasure by the William WordsworthWordsworth clan.
Blain, Virginia. Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854. Ashgate.
122
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mary Russell Mitford discussed it in an exchange of letters. While Mitford thought...
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 Mary Ann Browne
Mary Russell Mitford wrote that of all poetesses, MAB had touched with the sweetest, the firmest, the most delicate hand, the difficult chords of female passion.
Feldman, Paula R., editor. British Women Poets of the Romantic Era. John Hopkins University Press.
155
Literary responses Catherine Hutton
The Monthly Review found Dorothy too bold to be acceptable or indeed natural.
Constantine, Mary-Ann. “’The bounds of female reach’ Catherine Hutton’s Fiction and her Tours in Wales”. Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840, issue 22.
But a couple of years after its publication, the painter Sir William Elford recommended The Welsh Mountaineer to his friend Mary Russell Mitford
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 Harriet Martineau
HM later dated her release from pecuniary care from the huge, immediate success of this first number.
Martineau, Harriet, and Gaby Weiner. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography. Virago.
1: 178
The Athenæum, after hedging its bets for half of its brief paragraph, calling Martineau unimaginative...
Literary responses Jane Porter
Again her work was extremely popular. The French translation was banned by Napoleon because of its portrayal of nationalist resistance to conquest.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Mary Russell Mitford , who thought very highly of Porter, found Wallace in...
Literary responses Harriet Martineau
Mary Russell Mitford wrote disapprovingly of HM 's claims: I see no good in these experiments.
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: 281
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna 's pamphlet Mesmerism: A Letter to Miss Martineau, argued that if the account...
Literary responses Frances Arabella Rowden
Rowden's poem was reviewed by the Critical (3rd series 20 (May 1810): 112). Mary Russell Mitford read the first canto with high appreciation and admiration that increase[d] with every perusal. She expected it to rank...
Literary responses Frances Trollope
Heineman claims reception was poor in England as well as America because the cultural climate in the former was beginning to resemble that of the latter; because of this, controls on women's behaviour were seen...
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.
4th ser. 2 (1812) : 519
but it cited...
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...

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