Mary Robinson

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Standard Name: Robinson, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Darby
Married Name: Mrs Mary Robinson
Nickname: Perdita
Pseudonym: A Friend to Humanity
Pseudonym: Miss Randall
Pseudonym: Anne Frances Randall
Pseudonym: Laura
Pseudonym: Laura-Maria
Pseudonym: Julia
Pseudonym: Daphne
Pseudonym: Oberon
Pseudonym: Echo
Pseudonym: Louisa
Pseudonym: Tabitha Bramble
Indexed Name: Mrs Thomas Robinson
MR , scandalous woman and Romantic poet, was also a forceful and emotional, radical writer in many other genres: novels, scholarship, memoirs, drama, periodical essays, and translation. During the last two years of her life her level of productivity was almost frenetic, and the quality of her writing was adversely affected.
Glamorous painting of Mary Robinson, attributed to John Hoppner. She wears a black hat with wide drooping brim, adorned with white ostrich feathers which echo her big-style powdered hair. Her gown is black with lace at the low neckline and a red rose on the sleeve, echoing red drapery behind her.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Mary Russell Mitford
MRM was said to have learned to read by the time she was three. In January 1806 she got through fifty-five volumes, including books by Sarah Harriet Burney , Maria Edgeworth , Elizabeth Hamilton ,...
Family and Intimate relationships Naomi Jacob
She describes her mother as in advance of her times in many ways: a bicycle rider, a Poor Law Guardian,
Jacob, Naomi. Me: A Chronicle about Other People. Hutchinson, 1933.
38
witty, charming, deeply religious, but with no money and no idea how to...
Family and Intimate relationships Sophia King
In SK 's life, as in her sister's, their father, John King , the former Jacob Rey, loomed large. He was a self-made man, a money-lender, a political radical and associate of Wilkes , the...
Family and Intimate relationships Grace Elliott
In her earliest years in Paris she was the mistress first of the comte d'Artois (who much later reigned as Charles X ) and then of the duc de Chartres (later duc d'Orléans , later...
Family and Intimate relationships Leah Sumbel
Most important among her various lovers was the minor writer Edward Topham , with whom her relationship approached a common-law marriage. (He had been briefly the lover of Mary Robinson .) LS says that Topham's...
Family and Intimate relationships Charlotte Dacre
CD 's father was born Jacob Rey , a Portuguese Sephardic Jew in London. Tom Paine the radical later recalled that as a poor and friendless child in Ailiffe-Street, an obscure part of the...
Friends, Associates Anna Eliza Bray
Through her father and grandfather, AEB was introduced to the actress Mary Robinson .
Mudge, Bradford Keyes, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 116. Gale Research, 1992.
116: 51
Friends, Associates Mary, Lady Champion de Crespigny
MLCC mentions her warm friendships with leading officers of the Royal Navy , whom she knew through her husband's position. A number of writers too, including Mariana Starke , became her personal friends.
Crawford, Elizabeth. “Posts tagged Mariana Starke”. Woman and her Sphere.
2 November 2012
Friends, Associates Leah Sumbel
Mary Wells (later LS ) drew her female friends from both the theatre and the demi-monde: they included Elizabeth Sarah Gooch and Mary Robinson , as well as the highly respectable Elizabeth Inchbald .
Friends, Associates Eliza Fenwick
Eliza and John Fenwick were close friends of Maria Reveley , her first husband the architect Willey Reveley , and their son the architect and engineer Henry Willey Reveley . (Their son was a playmate...
Friends, Associates Eliza Parsons
Mary Robinson , writing to Samuel Jackson Pratt about visiting authoresses, said she expected soon to see Mrs Parsons—that is EP —at her daughter's house at Englefield Common.
This letter is now in the Pforzheimer Collection .
Robinson, Mary. Letter to Samuel Jackson Pratt, 31 August 1800.
Friends, Associates Mary Wollstonecraft
At this time MW 's achievements were admired by Southey , Coleridge , and many English Jacobins who felt themselves oppressed. Her friends included Elizabeth Inchbald , Mary Robinson , and more warmly Eliza Fenwick
Friends, Associates Jane Porter
JP was also a friend of Mary Robinson —actress, poet, and novelist—but this friendship was threatened by Robinson's position outside respectable society. When Robinson published some lines about JP in a newspaper, Mary Champion de Crespigny
Friends, Associates Anna Maria Bennett
It seems that AMB was a friend of the poet and novelist Mary Robinson (whose early notoriety made some respectable women wary of friendship with her). Robinson wrote on 31st August 1800 from Englefield Cottage...
Friends, Associates Mary Hays
This was her most formative and most famous friendship. She had approached Wollstonecraft after the latter published Vindication of the Rights of Woman early that same year. Wollstonecraft proved a valuable professional mentor. Another relationship...

Timeline

June 1787
Thomas Bellamy launched The General Magazine and Impartial Review, which continued with variations in subtitle until December 1792.
4 April 1788
At about the time that he lost his religious faith, William Godwin began keeping a diary, which he continued almost daily until 26 March 1836, only two weeks before he died.
June 1793
An enterprising printer and freemason, John Wharlton Bunney , put out the first number of The Free-Mason's Magazine, or General and Complete Library.
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.
24 November 1800
The Morning Post printed Coleridge 's love-lyricAlcaeus to Sappho, which he had sent in about six weeks earlier and which was probably addressed to Mary Robinson .
1827
Publishers Hunt and Clarke reprinted both Charlotte Charke and Mary Robinson in its series entitled Autobiography. A Collection of the Most Instructive and Amusing Lives ever published.