Mary Russell Mitford (
December 16, 1787 -
January 10, 1855), was an
English novelist and
dramatist.
The only daughter of Dr George Mitford, or Midford, she was born at
Alresford, Hampshire. Her place in
English literature is as the author of
Our Village. This series of sketches of village scenes and vividly drawn characters was based upon life in
Three Mile Cross, a hamlet in the parish of
Shinfield, near
Reading in
Berkshire, where she lived. Her father spent his wife's fortune in a few years. Then he spent the greater part of £20,000, which in
1797 his daughter, then aged ten, drew as a prize in a
lottery. The family lived in large properties in
Reading and then
Grazeley (in
Sulhamstead Abbots
parish), but, when the money was all gone, 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 the womanly tolerance which inspire so many of her sketches of character. She was devoted to him, refused all holiday invitations because he could not live without her, and worked incessantly for him except when she broke off to read him the sporting newspapers.
Her writing has all the charm of unaffected spontaneous humour, combined with quick wit and literary skill. She met
Elizabeth Barrett Browning in
1836, and their acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship. The strain of poverty told on her work, for although her books sold at high prices, her income did not keep pace with her father's extravagances. In
1837, however, she received a
civil list pension, and five years later her father died. A subscription was raised to pay his debts, and the surplus increased Mary's income. She eventually moved to a cottage in
Swallowfield, where she remained for the rest of her life. She is buried in the churchyard there.
Her youthful ambition had been to be the greatest English poetess, and her first publications were poems in the manner of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and
Walter Scott (
Miscellaneous Verses,
1810, reviewed by Scott in the
Quarterly;
Christine, a metrical tale,
1811; Blanche,
1813). Her play
Julian was produced at
Covent Garden, with
William Charles Macready in the title role, in
1823; The
Foscari was performed at Covent Garden, with
Charles Kemble as the hero, in
1826; Rienzi,
1828, the best of her plays, had a run of thirty-four nights, and Mary's friend,
Thomas Noon Talfourd, imagined that its vogue militated against the success of his own play
Ion.
Charles the First was refused a licence by the
Lord Chamberlain, but was played at the Surrey Theatre in
1834.
The prose, to which she was driven by domestic necessities, is more successful than her verse. The first series of
Our Village sketches appeared in
1824, a second in
1826, a third in
1828, a fourth in
1830, a fifth in
1832. They were reprinted several times.
Belford Regis, a
novel in which the neighborhood and society of Reading were idealized, was published in
1835.
Her
Recollections of a Literary Life (
1852) is a series of causeries about her favorite books. Her talk was said by her friends, Elizabeth Browning and
Hengist Horne, to have been even more amusing than her books, and five volumes of her
Life and Letters, published in
1870 and
1872, show her to have been a delightful letter-writer.
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