Sir William Elford
Sir William Elford
ElfordWilliamSirbaronet
1749-08
1837-11-30
According to L'Estrange, Elford was a friend of Mitford's father, and Mitford met him for the first time in the spring of 1810 when he was nearing the age of 64. "He was a fellow of the Royal and Linnaean Societies, and recorder of Plymouth, which borough he also represented in Parliament for many years. Mr. Pitt had created him a baronet in 1800." [L'Estrange vol. 1 of 3, pp. 104-105]
Parsons Elaine Frantz Consulting Editor
Duquesne University
Wilson Lisa M. Founding Editor
State University of New York at Potsdam
Lisa Wilson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English and Communication at SUNY Potsdam, where she has taught since 2005. Her areas of interest include transatlantic Romantic and Victorian era literature, particularly women’s writing and popular forms such as the Gothic novel and the ballad revival. She is also interested in book history and bibliographical studies, particularly in the study of authorship in the long nineteenth century (1780-1900). She has published in European Romantic Review, Romanticism on the Net (now RaVon), Romantic Circles, Romantic Textualities, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a monograph on Romantic-period authorship and literary celebrity. Her work on Digital Mitford thus far includes editing and coding Mitford’s lengthy “Introduction” to her collected Dramatic Works (1854), a critical memoir that recounts the author’s influences and experiences at Covent Garden and Drury Lane in the 1820s and 30s. It also includes researching Mitford’s publication history for the site’s working bibliography, particularly tracking the migration of Mitford’s stories from their first publication to their later reappearances in collections and periodicals. She and her team of undergraduate student researchers are also working on transcribing, coding, and researching Mitford’s letters from the early 1820s as found in the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester.
Beshero-Bondar Elisa Principal Editor
Associate Professor of English University of Pittsburgh
at Greensburg
Reading Central Library The principal archive of Mary
Russell Mitford's personal papers and related documents, holding
approximately 1,000 manuscripts and a nearly comprehensive collection of her
publications.
Mitford Mary Russell
female
1787-12-16
1855-01-10
literarygardening
Poet, playwright, writer of prose fiction sketches, Mary Russell Mitford is, of course, the subject of our archive. Much of her writing was devoted to supporting herself and her parents. She received a civil list pension in 1837. Mitford's long life and prolific career ended after injuries from a carriage accident, and she is buried in Swallowfield churchyard.
River Styx
River in Greek mythology that separates the realms of the living from the dead, and encircling Hades (the realm of the dead or underworld). For more, see the reference in Encyclopedia Mythica:
Palmer Gordon Madelina the Lady
PalmerGordonMadelinathe Lady
Lady M.P.
Lady Mad.
Lady Madalina Palmer
Lady M. Palmer
tiresome woman
my Lady
female
sometime after 17721772?
1847
Her second marriage was to the Reading Whig politician Charles Fyshe Palmer. His marriage to her gained him access to aristocratic houses, including the Holland House. For more on the Palmers see note 2 in The Browning's Correspondence rendering of Mitford's letter of 12 March 1842 to Elizabeth Barrett Browning : .
Palmer Charles Fyshe
PalmerCharlesFyshe
Mr. Palmer
Long Fyshe
male
sometime after 1770
1843-01-24
On March 16, 1820, an election in Reading was held. There were three candidates: John Berkeley Monck (418 votes), Charles Fyshe Palmer(399 votes), and John Weyland(395 votes.) A Whig politician, he began running for Parliament elections as the member for Reading after 1816, and appears to have served off and on in that role until 1841. He led the Berkshire meetings to protest British government's handling of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819. Mitford's letters indicate a pronounced dislike of him as she vastly preferred his opponent J. B. Monck, and she reportedly satirized the Palmer in 1818 as "vastly like a mop-stick, or, rather, a tall hop-pole, or an extremely long fishing-rod, or anything that is all length and no substance." Palmer mentioned in connection with a potential legal issue with the Billiard Club in Mitford's letter to Talfourd of 31 August 1822. Palmer's opponents sometimes undermined his Whiggish position by referencing the noble privileges he accrued by marrying the Lady Madalina Gordon in 1805. [Source: see . See also note 2 in The Browning's Correspondence rendering of Mitford's letter of 12 March 1842 to Elizabeth Barrett Browning : .
Caroline Queen Consort of the United Kingdom
Queen Consort of the United Kingdom
Caroline of Brunswick
Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Princess of Wales
female
1768-05-17
1821-08-07
The cousin and estranged wife of the Prince Regent (later George IV). Caroline was adopted as the leader of the parliamentary reform movement around the time that the Regent attempted to divorce her on grounds of adultery in 1818, and his struggles with Parliament to divorce her and prevent her from becoming Queen are known as the Queen Caroline Affair.
Devon
County in the southwest of England bordering with the English Channel and the Bristol Channel.
Palmerite
Supporter of Charles Fyshe Palmer in the Reading elections of March 16, 1820.
Mrs. Monck
female
wife of J.B. Monck, M.P.
the Moncks, family of John Berkeley
Monck
John Berkeley Monck
male
MP for Reading area 1820-1830, who frequently franked Mary Russell Mitford's letters.
MRM's letter to Sir William Elford of 20 March 1820 describes the election of Monck, describing him in context with a shoemaker who brought him from France: "Mr. Monck an opposition man of large fortune brought from France in a fit of patriotism by our celebrated shoemaker & Patriot Mr.
W
." We are hoping to discover who this shoemaker is.
Charles James Fox The Honourable
male
1749-01-24
1806-09-13
politician
Whig politician, member of the House of Commons, and Prime Minister. Fox was an outspoken opponent of King George III and William Pitt the Younger, supporter of the American and French Revolutions as well as the abolitionist cause. His politics became widely known as "Foxite radicalism" and synonymous with populist causes.
Coley
Coley, Berkshire, a district near the center of the town of Reading
George IV King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland
King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland
George Augustus Frederick
Prince Regent
male
1762-08-12
1830-06-26
monarch
The Regency period was named for George when he ruled in his father's stead from 1811 to 1820.
Liston Tyrer Sarah
ListonTyrerSarah
Sarah Liston
Mrs. John Liston
Miss Tyrer
Sarah Tyrer
female
1781
1854
English comic actress known for her singing voice and roles in burlesque operas, and celebrated for her performance as Miss Tyrer of Queen Dollalolla in Kane O'Hara's burlesque adaptation of Henry Fielding's Tom Thumb , in Haymarket Theatre, July 1805. She began her theatrical career at Drury Lane and Haymarket theaters in May and June of 1801, was engaged by Covent Garden Theatre in September 1805, and married the comic actor John Liston on 22 March 1807. Both John and Sarah Liston publicly retired from the theatre with valedictory performances at Covent Garden on 31 May 1822. [Sources: entries on John Liston in ODNB, DNB 1885-1900. See in particular ]
Queen Dollalolla
female
Comic role in Henry Fielding's play Tom Thumb, adapted in Mitford's day by Kane O'Hara as a comic opera, with Sarah Tyrer famously playing this role.
Court of Pope Pius VII
Pope Pius VII and his Cardinals, from 1800 to 1823. The court was driven to exile in Savona between 1809 and 1813, but restored to Rome after a treaty with Napoleon.
Pope Pius VII
PopeChiaramontiBarnabaNiccolòMariaLuigi
1742-08-14
1823-08-20
religion
Pius the VII reigned the Pope, or patriarch of the Catholic Church, from 1800 to 1823. He and his Cardinals were exiled by Napoleon to Savona from 1809 to 1813, and restored to Rome by signing a treaty in 1813. Mitford mentions an unspecified past visit of J. B. Monck to the Pope's Court in her letter to Sir William Elford of 9 September 1820 .
Savona, Papal States
Pope Pius VII and his Cardinals were driven to exile here by Napoleon, between 1809 and 1813.
Scott, Walter Walter Scott
male
1771-08-15
1832-09-21
literarygovernment
Scottish antiquarian, poet, and novelist. Also worked as clerk of the Court of Session in Edinburgh. He assembled a collection of Scottish ballads, many of which had never before been printed, in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, first published in 1802, but continually expanded in revised editions through 1812 . Author of the long romance poems, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Marmion (1808), and The Lady of the Lake (1810). From 1814-1831, Scott published 23 novels, and over the course of his literary career, he wrote review articles for the Edinburgh Review, The Quarterly Review, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and the Foreign Quarterly Review.
