Mary Russell Mitford

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". Rowden took Mitford to Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, especially to plays featuring John Kemble, and entranced her with the life of the theatre.