MITFORD, MARY RUSSELL ( , English novelist and dramatist, only daughter of Dr. George Mitford, or Midford, was born at Alresford, Hampshire, on Dec. 16, 1787. She retains an honourable place in literature as the authoress of Our Village (1824-32), a series of sketches of village scenes and characters unsurpassed in their kind, and as fresh as if they had been written yesterday. Miss Mitford lived in close at tendance on an eccentric father, refused all holiday invitations because he could not live without her, and worked incessantly for him except when she broke off her work to read him the sporting newspapers. Her writing has the charm of perfectly unaffected spontaneous humour, combined with quick wit and real literary skill. Miss Mitford met Elizabeth Barrett (Mrs. Browning) in 1836, and the acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship. The strain of poverty began to tell 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 the daughter's income. She died at Swallowfield, near Reading, on Jan. 1o, 1855.
Her father was a curious character. He first spent his wife's for tune then the greater part of £20,000 which his daughter won in a lottery at the age of ten.
Miss Mitford wrote poems in the manner of Coleridge and Scott (Miscellaneous Verses, 181o, reviewed by Scott in the Quar terly; Christine, a metrical tale, I8II; Blanche, 1813). Several of her plays were produced with success, notably Julian (1823), The Foscari (1826), Rienzi (1828), and Charles I. (1834). Bel ford Regis, a novel idealizing Reading, was published in 1835.