Mitford was educated at St. Quentin's school in London and through her own voracious appetite for reading. Having won the lottery of £20,000 when she was 10, it allowed her father to acquire a small country estate - he would later go on to squander all of the money and become totally dependent on Mary's literary earnings. She published her first work, Miscellaneous Poems, in 1810. Although criticized, her poetry was nevertheless very popular. In 1820, she moved to the village of Three Miles Cross where she continued to live for thirty years. Encouraged by Samuel Coleridge to write tragedy, Mitford produced a number of plays during the 1820's, the most memorable being Rienzi in 1828. She began to publish stories of village life in Lady's Magazine and they were so popular that she collected them into Our Village in five volumes published between 1824 and 1832. The first single volume edition appeared in 1843. In 1835, she published her novel Belford Regis, or Sketches of a Country Town. In 1836, she was introduced to Elizabeth Barrett (Browning) and they became life-long friends. In 1837 she was awarded a civil list pension of £100 a year. In 1851, she moved to Swallowfield where she wrote Recollections of a Literary Life an autobiography that was well-received and ran to three further editions. Her other works include Christina, or the Maid of the South Seas (1811), Blanche of Castile (1812), Poems on the Female Character (1813), Julian (1823), Foscari (1826, Mary Queen of Scots (1831) and American Stories for Children (1832). |
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