Some Mary Robinson Info

Because I missed my blog post last week, I am posting this as a supplementary one for this week. This is really more-so additional biographical information about Mary Robinson than a true blog post. Mary Robinson wrote an autobiography for herself, and though she never finished it, it seems like the manuscript would be interesting. As the Norton anthology headnote for Mary Robinson notes, she "lived a more sensational life than any other poet of the period, Byron and Shelley included" (77). From what we've discussed of Byron and Shelley in class, that's saying something.

Below is an excerpt from the editor's preface of the memoirs that helps to illustrate Mary Robinson the person:

"THE author of these Memoirs, Mary Robinson, was one of the most prominent and eminently beautiful women of her day. From the description she furnishes of her personal appearance we gather that her complexion was dark, her eyes large, her features expressive of melancholy; and this verbal sketch corresponds with her portrait, which presents a face at once grave, refined, and charming. Her beauty, indeed, was such as to attract, amongst others, the attentions of Lords Lyttelton and Northington, Fighting Fitzgerald, Captain Ayscough, and finally the Prince of Wales; whilst her talents and conversation secured her the friendship and interest of David Garrick, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Charles James Fox, Joshua Reynolds, Arthur Murphy, the dramatist, and various other men of distinguished talent. [Page viii]  

Though her Memoirs are briefly sketched, they are sufficiently vivid to present us with various pictures of the social life of the period of which she was the centre. Now we find her at the Pantheon, with its coloured lamps and brilliant music, moving amidst a fashionable crowd, where large hoops and high feathers abounded, she herself dressed in a habit of pale pink satin trimmed with sable, attracting the attention of men of fashion. Again she is surrounded by friends at Vauxhall Gardens, and barely escapes from a cunning plot to abduct her–a plot in which loaded pistols and a waiting coach prominently figure; whilst on another occasion she is at Ranelagh, where, in the course of the evening, half a dozen gallants "evinced their attentions"; and ultimately she makes her first appearance as an actress on the stage of Drury Lane before a brilliant house, David Garrick, now retired, watching her from the orchestra, whilst she played Juliet in pink satin richly spangled with silver, her head ornamented with white feathers."

Here are some portraits of Mary, as well: