Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855)
Nobody captured the ethos and spirit of pre-industrial Berkshire and Reading more than Mary Russell Mitford. Although born in Hampshire, the daughter of a feckless medical doctor, the family first moved to Reading in 1791 when Mary was four years old. But Dr. Mitford’s high living and extravagance saw him squander his wife’s fortune, and the family moved away for a time. In 1797 young Mary won £20,000 on an Irish Lottery, however, and the family moved back to Reading to 39 London Road, although Mary was actually educated at the Abbey School when it transferred to London. Eventually Dr. Mitford bought and re-built Grazeley Court, a large house (re-named Bertram House) on the outskirts of Reading, mainly with the proceeds of Mary’s winnings. Mary saw a good deal of Reading society at this time, and attended many local balls and even Reading races. But Dr. Mitford’s gambling habits gradually led to his downfall, and the family had to sell Bertram House and move to a small cottage at Three Mile Cross in 1819. By now, however, Mary had begun to achieve some reputation as a poet, and in the 1820s had several plays successfully produced, such as Julian (1823) and Rienzi (1828)

During these years Mary was also regularly contributing articles and sketches to such periodicals as the Ladies Magazine and New Monthly Magazine, and these were eventually collected together and published in separate volumes under the title of Our Village from 1824-1832. They were a great success, frequently reprinted, and established Mary Mitford as an important literary figure.

Our Village consists of a series of sketches and short stories about country life and society focusing on an imaginary village. There are short, mainly descriptive essays, such as ‘Frost and Thaw’ and ‘The First Primrose,’ mixed in with amusing stories, such as an account of a village cricket-match, and sad ones such as the story of some boys who were drowned in a chalk-pit. The tales are full of realistic observations of local people - farmers, landlords, servants, soldiers, and even mole-catchers. There are many, largely happy, love affairs and marriages. A young gypsy girl marries the game-keeper, and Colonel Sandford happily weds his young ward. Although there is little social analysis here at a time when there was considerable rural distress, there is a sense of the business of ordinary lives, and much more about poverty and hardship – among widows, gypsies and poor soldiers - than Mary Mitford is normally given credit for. But there is also a warmth and humour that reminds one of Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford.

Belford Regis (1835) is a collection of sketches and tales about the country town called Belford Regis (i.e.Reading). Elizabeth Barrett Browning regarded it as Mary Mitford’s best work – and indeed it is more dramatic, with fewer purely descriptive entries than Our Village. The work focuses upon the inhabitants of Belford Regis as they were perhaps at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Napoleonic Wars are in the background and the Enclosure Movement is causing some distress, as we follow the lives of shop-keepers, priests, business men, local aristocrats, carpenters and Members of Parliament. Although Reform is in the air, we are really getting a picture of Reading as it was thirty years earlier, with the different stories linked together by the recurring presence of a few central characters – Stephen Lane, the butcher, Louis Duval, an artist, and the Rev. Singleton.

By the 1830s Mary Mitford had become a celebrated figure, the friend of Wordsworth and Robert Browning, but with failing health. Her father, whom she had supported by her literary earnings, died in 1842, leaving her with many debts. Her last important work was her Recollections of a Literary Life (1852). The poor state of her cottage led her to move to Swallowfield in 1851, and here she died in January 1855.

One of Mary Mitford’s literary acquaintances at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Mrs. Barbara Hofland (1770-1844) also had strong connections with Reading, for her husband, T.C. Hofland, the landscape artist, was commissioned by the Marquis of Blandford to produce a book containing illustrations celebrating his mansion at Whiteknights. Barbara, who wrote a long descriptive poem, to accompany the illustrations, became a good friend of Mary’s during her regular visits to Reading, but by the time A Descriptive Account of Whiteknights was finished in 1819, the Marquis, now Duke of Marlborough, was virtually bankrupt, and the Hoflands did not receive a penny for their labours.

Other nineteenth-century writers included Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868), one-time Vicar of St. Mary’s, who achieved considerable success with such religious dramas as The Fall of Jerusalem (1820) and The Martyr of Antioch (1822). The brothers Walter White (1811-1893) and William White (1820-1900) were well-known for their travel-books, and William Deacon (1799-1844) achieved great popularity with Warreniana (1824), his comic parodies of such writers as Byron and Wordsworth, which rapidly went into four editions in so many years. Although primarily a historian, John Man (1749-1824) is remembered for his sprightly series of letters about Reading purporting to be from a traveller to his friend in London, first published in 1810 under the title of The Stranger in Reading. A later writer, Mortimer Collins (1827-1876), was already a well-known poet and novelist, author of such books as Sweet Anne Page (1868), when he moved to Knowle Hill on his second marriage in 1868. One of Mary Mitford’s best Reading friends, however, was the lawyer and author Thomas Noon Talfourd.

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