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
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
Textual Features Jane West
JW uses heroic couplets for formal poems like To the Island of Sicily (on the retreat of the king and queen of the Two Sicilies before the French Army of Italy, commanded by Napoleon ...
Textual Production Eglinton Wallace
It appeared in two different editions put out this year through the different publishers T. Hookham , and Debrett . The Debrett edition lists the price, one shilling and sixpence, on the title-page.
“Eighteenth Century Collections Online”. Gale Databases.
Goethe's novel...
Textual Production Anna Jane Vardill
For her first few years of appearing there, AJV was almost the only woman in the longish list of poetry contributors to the European Magazine (although over the magazine's lifetime the eleven women who published...
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 .
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...
Textual Production Leah Sumbel
It is often said (for instance by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography) that Topham's main aim in this venture was to boost her career. The World was known for featuring personal attacks on...
Intertextuality and Influence G. B. Stern
GBS describes one of her own short stories in a manner that reflects oddly on the oblivion which enfolded earlier women writers during her career. The story concerns a beautiful, elegant young woman who feels...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Isabella Spence
She begins with Wales (whose countryside she praises but whose peasants she fairly sweepingly dismisses).
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Summer Excursions. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme.
1: 24-5
Although her title-page does not name it, she returned to Wales on a later journey, and devotes a...
Textual Features Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
Even Sappho's suicide is rewritten not as an act of tragedy, precipitated by her abandonment by her lover Phaon (as Mary Robinson had depicted it in Sappho and Phaon, 1796) but as a calm...
Intertextuality and Influence Sappho
Sappho has inspired many original English poems, including John Lyly 's Sapho and Phao [sic], 1584; Alexander Pope 's Sapho to Phaon, 1712, and Eloisa to Abelard, 1717; and Mary Robinson 's...
Intertextuality and Influence Sappho
Elizabeth Moody engagingly converts Sappho into a contemporary in Sappho Burns her Books and Cultivates the Culinary Arts, 1798.
Jay, Peter, and Caroline Lewis. Sappho Through English Poetry. Anvil Press Poetry.
98
But many women poets accepted the notion of her rejected love for Phaon: Robinson
Intertextuality and Influence Mrs Ross
MR 's title is a complex literary allusion. The tragic heroine of Nicholas Rowe 's The Fair Penitent, 1703, tells her unwanted fiancé that their hearts were never paired above . . . joined...
Literary responses Ann Radcliffe
The Italian won for AR the accolade of praise from Thomas James Matthias , scholar, editor, and librarian at Buckingham Palace, who invoked the shade of Ariosto to honour her in the same place...
Textual Production Jane Porter
In 1800 appeared a pamphlet essay which may be by JP or to her and her sister : A Defence of the Profession of an Actor.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Stuart Bennett Rare Books & Manuscripts: A Catalogue of Books By, For, and About Women of the British Isles, 1696-1892. Stuart Bennett Rare Books & Manuscripts.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Thomas McLean

Timeline

June 1787: Thomas Bellamy launched The General Magazine...

Writing climate item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Women writers item

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-lyric...

Writing climate item

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...

Women writers item

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.

Texts

Robinson, Mary. Angelina. Printed for the author and sold by Hookham and Carpenter, 1796.
Robinson, Mary. Captivity. A Poem; and, Celadon and Julia. A Tale. T. Becket, 1777.
Robinson, Mary. Hubert de Sevrac. Printed for the author by Hookham and Carpenter, 1796.
Robinson, Mary. Impartial Reflections on the Present Situation of the Queen of France. John Bell, 1791.
Robinson, Mary. “Introduction”. Perdita: The Memoirs of Mary Robinson, edited by Moses Joseph Levy, Peter Owen, 1994.
Robinson, Mary. “Introduction”. Mary Robinson: Selected Poems, edited by Judith Pascoe, Broadview, 2000, pp. 19-64.
Robinson, Mary. Letter about visitors at Englefield Green to Samuel Jackson Pratt.
Robinson, Mary. Letter to Samuel Jackson Pratt, 31 August 1800.
Robinson, Mary. Lyrical Tales. Prionted by Biggs and Cottle for T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800.
Robinson, Mary. Mary Robinson: Selected Poems. Editor Pascoe, Judith, Broadview, 2000.
Robinson, Mary. Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Robinson. Editor Robinson, Maria Elizabeth, R. Phillips, 1801.
Robinson, Mary. Monody to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds. J. Bell, 1792.
Robinson, Mary. Monody to the Memory of the Late Queen of France. Printed by T. Spilsbury and Son and sold by J. Evans and T. Becket, 1793.
Robinson, Mary. Ode to the Harp of the Late Accomplished and Amiable Louisa Hanway. John Bell, 1793.
Robinson, Mary. Perdita: The Memoirs of Mary Robinson. Editor Levy, Moses Joseph, Peter Owen, 1994.
Hager, Giuseppe. Picture of Palermo. Translator Robinson, Mary, R. Phillips, 1800.
Robinson, Mary. Poems. C. Parker, 1775.
Robinson, Mary. Poems. J. Bell; J. Evans, 1793.
Robinson, Mary. Sappho and Phaon. Printed by S. Gosnell for the Author, 1796.
Robinson, Mary. Sight, The Cavern of Woe, and Solitude. Printed by T. Spilsbury and sold by J. Evans, 1793.
Robinson, Mary. The False Friend. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799.
Robinson, Mary. The Lucky Escape. Printed for the author, 1778.
Robinson, Mary. The Natural Daughter. T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799.
Robinson, Mary. The Poetical Works of the Late Mrs. Mary Robinson. Editor Robinson, Maria Elizabeth, R. Phillips, 1806.
Robinson, Mary. The Sicilian Lover. Printed for the author, by Hookham and Carpenter, 1796.