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 Anna Maria Hall
The sketches were popular with readers.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
A review in the Literary Gazette (yet more prone to read Irish stereotypes than Hall was to write them) called Sketches of Irish Characterthoroughly Irish, with all the...
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...
Literary responses Lady Rachel Russell
As love-letters, they made a great and immediate impression on their readers. Yet later this year Mary Russell Mitford wrote of LRR with dislike. Mitford found her heavy, preachy, and prosy. As a writer, she...
Literary responses Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
Mary Russell Mitford , stuck fast in this novel within a month or two of its publication, called it that do-me-good piece of vulgarity.
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: 364
Literary responses Anna Maria Bennett
Mary Russell Mitford read the Beggar Girl with delight as a schoolgirl in Chelsea, liking it not only for the character and the liveliness, but for the abundant story—incident toppling after incident; all sufficiently natural...
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 Margaret Holford
Mary Russell Mitford called this novel an attempt to portray the poet Byron , recognisable through several anecdotes familiarly told about him, in very black and exaggerated colors. She maintained that Joanna Baillie , as...
Literary responses Frances Trollope
Soon after its appearance Mary Russell Mitford heard this book reputed as clever, but not agreeable.
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: 168
FT received stern reviews from the Times and The Spectator for representing genteel society as petty and...
Occupation Barbara Hofland
Mary Russell Mitford tells an amusing story of BH 's charitable philanthropy failing in its object. Hofland had been to great trouble and expense to help a starving male poet with a sick mother. She...
Occupation Sarah Tytler
As regards the typical feminine curriculum, ST resented the tradition of mandatory music teaching—of the piano—to young women, and the slight to other branches of education in the extravagant favour shown to one branch.
Tytler, Sarah. Three Generations. J. Murray, 1911.
235-6
Occupation Honoré de Balzac
Mary Russell Mitford translated some of Balzac's works. His oeuvre influenced many writers, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon , Storm Jameson , and Natalie Clifford Barney , and has attracted criticism from Anita Brookner .
Occupation Thomas Holcroft
Working as a stable-boy, being entrusted with the management of one of that race of creatures that were the most admired and beloved by me,
qtd. in
Holcroft, Thomas, and William Hazlitt. The Life of Thomas Holcroft. Editor Colby, Elbridge, Constable, 1925, 2 vols.
1: 52
seemed too good to be true. Though it...
Occupation Frances Arabella Rowden
FAR was clearly a key element, perhaps the key element, in the success of the Hans Place school. She taught the general curriculum there for nearly twenty-five years, from its founding until 1818, and she...
Occupation Fanny Kemble
Later in 1830, when she acted Calista in Nicholas Rowe 's The Fair Penitent, Thomas Noon Talfourd told Mary Russell Mitfordthat, at a distance from the stage, he could almost have imagined her...
Other Life Event Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett 's dog Flush, a highly-valued companion given her by Mary Russell Mitford , was stolen and held for two days before being returned for a ransom of five guineas.
Forster, Margaret. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography. Grafton, 1990.
100, 117-18
Browning, Robert, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Brownings’ Correspondence. Editors Kelley, Philip et al., Wedgestone Press, 1984–2024, 14 vols. to date.
7: xii

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