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 Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
The virtues of this powerful Irish novel were not fully appreciated in England. Mary Russell Mitford thought that Morgan would be all right without the politics: she would be worth reading and praising if only...
Literary responses Henrietta Euphemia Tindal
Mary Russell Mitford particularly praised The Infant Bridal for its pictorial qualities: she said it might be transferred to canvas without altering a word.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places and People. R. Bentley, 1852, 3 vols.
277
She said too that HET 's poetry so free, so...
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.
qtd. in
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: 175
In his obituary of MH , James Britten
Literary responses Amelia Opie
Mary Russell Mitford , about to begin this book in its year of publication, summed AO up as clever and good-natured but predictable and not for the fastidious. She knew the recipe for Madeline...
Literary responses Mary Wollstonecraft
MW 's posthumous vilification was followed by a long period during which her name was considered barely fit to be mentioned. Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna borrowed her title The Wrongs of Woman in 1843; Maria Jane Jewsbury
Literary responses Emma Robinson
The Athenæum's reviewer, Henry Fothergill Chorley , wrote that after Mary Russell Mitford 's characterization of Cromwell in her Charles the First, we know not who has conceived of the great General better...
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 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 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 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 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...

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