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
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 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, 5 series.
4th ser. 2 (1812) : 519
but it cited...
Literary responses Amelia Opie
Opie's Tales of Real Life was praised by Mary Russell Mitford .
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, 2 vols.
1: 188
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, 1 Mar.–31 May 2017.
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 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, 1983, 2 vols.
1: 178
The Athenæum, after hedging its bets for half of its brief paragraph, calling Martineau unimaginative...
Literary responses Amelia Opie
AO 's novels, which formed a comparatively minor part of her output, had an impact beyond the rest of her work. Literary historian Gary Kelly notes that when they were new they commanded among the...
Literary responses Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In probably 1836, Mary Russell Mitford signalled her friendship for Lady Dacre by sendng her Barrett's Prometheus Bound and An Essay on Mind, with praise for her power of writing, the force, the fire...
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, 1990.
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, 1870, 2 vols.
2: 281
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna 's pamphlet Mesmerism: A Letter to Miss Martineau, argued that if the account...
Literary responses Grace Aguilar
This must be the volume of tales of which Mary Russell Mitford , reading them in June 1853 after the author's death, wrote: How affecting they are! And how healthy and true is the pathos—springing...
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 Jane Austen
Mary Russell Mitford found JA 's heroine pert and worldly.
qtd. in
Fergus, Jan. “The Professional Woman Writer”. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, edited by Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
20
Jane, Lady Davy (wife of the eminent scientist), who confessed that with an exception for Maria Edgeworth she preferred old favourites to new...
Literary responses Elizabeth Barrett Browning
EBB 's ballads have proved of particular interest to feminist critics. Dorothy Mermin argues that in this apparently most innocent, retrogressive, and sentimental of female genres, she was exploring what was to become her central...
Literary responses Dinah Mulock Craik
Mary Russell Mitford supposed from reading this book that its author was Elizabeth Barrett Browning .
Athenæum. J. Lection.
(9 March 1872): 298
She may, however, have been building on another's opinion, for the Athenæum reviewer found abundant...
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.
qtd. in
Butts, Dennis. Mistress of our Tears, A Literary and Bibliographical Study of Barbara Hofland. Scolar Press, 1992.
19
Apart from somewhat overvaluing Hofland, this...

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