Mary Russell Mitford (16 December 1787 – 10 January 1855) was an English essayist, novelist, poet and dramatist. She was born in New Alresford in Hampshire, England. She is best known for Our Village, a series of sketches of village scenes and vividly drawn characters based upon her life in Three Mile Cross near Reading in Berkshire.

Childhood

She was the only daughter of George Mitford (or Midford), who apparently trained as a medical doctor, and Mary Russell, a descendant of the aristocratic Russell family. She grew up near Jane Austen and was an acquaintance of hers when young. She was also a close friend of Elizabeth Browning and gave her a cocker spaniel named Flush in 1840. In 1797, 10-year-old Mary won her father a lottery ticket worth £20,000, but by the 1810s the small family suffered financial difficulties. In the 1800s and 1810s they lived in large properties in Reading and then Grazeley (in Sulhamstead Abbots parish), but, when the money was all gone after 1819, they lived on a small remnant of the doctor's lost fortune and the proceeds of his daughter's literary career. He is thought to have inspired Mary with the keen delight in incongruities, the lively sympathy, self-willed vigorous individuality, and tolerance which inspire so many of her sketches of character. She cared for her mother and father until their deaths and supported them and herself by proceeds from her writing.

From age 10 to 15 she attended a school in Hans Place, Knightsbridge, London, the successor to Reading Abbey Girls' School, which Austen had attended a few years earlier. Her father engaged Frances Rowden, formerly governess to the family of Frederick Ponsonby, to give her extra tuition. Rowden was not only a published poet, but according to Mitford, "she had a knack of making poetesses of her pupils". On the other hand, Tom Fort, writing in 2017, took the view that "for a reader of today she is rather hard going ... She is, I'm sorry to say, trite, sentimental, long-winded, short-sighted, arch, chatty and twee."

Esther Meynell's 1939 novel English Spinster: a portrait is a fictional treatment of the life of Mary Russell Mitford.

Bibliography

  • 1810: Miscellaneous Poems

Literature

  • The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, related in a Selection from her Letters, 3 vols (1870 Bentley).
  • Henry Fothergill Chorley (Ed.), Letters of Mary Russell Mitford (1872).
  • A.G.K. L'Estrange (Ed.), The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford as recorded in Letters from Her Literary Correspondents, 2 vols (1882 Hurst & Blackett).
  • William J. Roberts, (The Life and Friendships of) Mary Russell Mitford: The Tragedy of a Blue Stocking (Andrew Melrose, London 1913). (Modern publishing: Kessinger 2007, )
  • M. Constance Hill, Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings (Bodley Head, London 1920).
  • Marjorie Astin, Mary Russell Mitford – Her Circle and Her Books (Noel Douglas, London 1930).
  • James E. Agate, Mary Russell Mitford (1940).
  • Vera G. Watson, Mary Russell Mitford (Evans Brothers, 1949).
  • Caroline Mary Duncan-Jones, Miss Mitford and Mr. Harness. Records of a Friendship. (S.P.C.K./Talbot Press, London 1955).
  • W.A. Coles, 'Mary Russell Mitford: the inauguration of a literary career', Journal of the John Rylands Library 40 (1957), 33–46.
  • Pamela Horn (Ed.), Life in a Country Town: Reading and Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855) (Beacon Publications, Sutton Courtenay 1984).
  • Catherine Addison, 'Gender and Genre in Mary Russell Mitford's Christina,' English Studies in Africa 41, Part 2 (1998), 1–21.
  • Diego Saglia, 'Public and Private in Women's Romantic Poetry: Spaces, Gender, Genre in Mary Russell Mitford's Blanch,' Women's Writing 5.3 (1998), 405–19.
  • Martin Garrett, 'Mary Russell Mitford', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.
  • Diego Saglia, 'Mediterranean Unrest: 1820s Verse Tragedies and Revolutions in the South,' Romanticism 11.1 (2005) 99–113.
  • Alison Booth, 'Revisiting the Homes and Haunts of Mary Russell Mitford', Nineteenth Century Contexts, 30 Part 1 (2008), 39–65.
  • Cecilia Pietropoli, 'The Story of the Foscaris, a Drama for Two Playwrights: Mary Mitford and Lord Byron,' in The Language of Performance in British Romanticism (Peter Lang, New York, 2008), 115–26.
  • Elisa Beshero-Bondar, 'Romancing the Pacific Isles Before Byron: Music, Sex, and Death in Mitford's Christina,' ELH 76.2 (Summer 2009) 277–308.
  • Digital Mitford: The Mary Russell Mitford Archive This project is producing new digital editions of Mary Russell Mitford's correspondence and literary works, holds bibliographical listing of Mitford's writings, and lists locations of her manuscripts.
  • Royal Berkshire History: Mary Russell Mitford
  • Bibliographical listing of commentaries
  • Mary Russell Mitford Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.