Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson (née Darby) was an English poet, dramatist, actor, novelist and feminist. She was born in Bristol, England on 27th November 1757 and died in Englefield Green, Surrey, England on 26th December 1800 aged 43.

“Vancenza; or the Dangers of Credulity” (1792)
“Angelina – A novel” (1796)
“A Letter to the Women of England” (1798) 
“The Natural Daughter” (1799)

1757: Mary Robinson (nee Darby) was born on 27th November in Bristol, England. Her father was Nicholas Darby, a sea captain and his wife was Hester, nee Vanacott from Somerset. Mary was baptised on 19th July 1758 as Polle or Polly at St Augustine’s Church in Bristol. She was educated at a school run by the social reformer Hannah More in Bristol. Her father deserted the family and took up with a mistress when Robinson was still a child. Her mother supported herself and her five children by setting up a school for young girls in Little Chelsea in London where Mary was to teach around the age of fourteen. Captain Darby later had the school closed as he did not approve.

1775: Short of money her mother encourages Mary to accept a proposal of marriage from a local legal clerk, Thomas Robinson who said he had an inheritance. Mary is not keen but goes along with it and marries him. Robinson finds out however that her husband does not have an inheritance and worse still lives extravagantly leaving them with debts. They leave for Talgarth in Breconshire in Wales and her only daughter Maria Elizabeth is born in November. They live at Tregunter Park but in time Thomas is arrested and imprisoned in the Fleet Prison in London for debts. Robinson lives with him in the prison with her daughter which is not unusual for the time. Here she realises she can write poetry for money and publishes her first work “Poems By Mrs. Robinson”. She also copies legal documents, earning money which should have gone to her husband but he refused to do the work. The book comes to the notice of several society people and Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire becomes her patron and sponsors her second work entitled “Captivity”.

1776: On release from Fleet prison, Robinson decides to launch an acting career. She plays Juliet in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” at the Drury Lane Theatre in December.

1779: Hereafter she becomes known by the nickname “Perdita” after her role in “Florizel and Perdita” based on Shakespeare’s“The Winter’s Tale”. The young Prince of Wales (Later King George the Fourth) sees her performance and starts an affair with her after offering her twenty thousand pounds to become his mistress. Emma, later to become Lady Hamilton (of Lord Nelson fame) is her dresser at the theatre at this point. Robinson now becomes a fashionable trendsetter about London although she bides her time before she actually leaves her husband.

1781: Sadly, the Prince of Wales ends the affair and refuses to pay the sum of money he promised. Robinson receives a small annuity from the crown but still tries to keep up her lifestyle as a celebrity. She has several other love affairs, in particular with the soldier Banastre Tarleton who had fought in the American War of Independence. Before him she had taken up with Lord Malden and he bets Tarleton that he could never take Mary away from him. Malden loses the bet and Mary and Tarleton continue a relationship for the next fifteen years. This again brings heart ache to Mary as Tarleton finally marries the heiress Susan Bertie, the illegitimate daughter of the fourth Duke of Ancaster. 

1783: She suffers a mysterious illness (probably an infection after a miscarriage) that leaves her partially paralysed. She continues writing poetry and from the late 1780s, she becomes known as “The English Sappho”.

1785: Her father Darby dies whilst in the Russian naval service.

1792: The first of her eight novels to be published is “Vancenza; or the Dangers of Credulity”. The gothic story of seduction is an immediate hit and sells out by lunch time on the first day. The critics, however, do not rate it.

1794: She writes “The Widow; or, A Picture of Modern Times” about manners in the fashionable world. This book is not as popular as “Vancenza”.

1796: She publishes the novel “Angelina”. This costs more money to produce than it brings in with sales. Besides poetry and novels, she writes feminist treatises and, like her contemporary Mary Wollstonecraft, she champions the rights of women and was a supporter of the French Revolution. Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes her as “A woman of undoubted genius” and William Godwin his wife Mary Wollstonecraft are also great admirers.

1797: She publishes the novel “Walsingham”. Her novels are often published also in French and German.

1799: She publishes “Thoughts on the Condition of Women” originally under the name Anne Frances Randall but later uses her own. Robert Southey leaves the “Morning Post” newspaper in December.

1800: She takes over from Southey as poetry editor of the “Morning Post” to which she has been a regular contributor for some years. She publishes “Lyrical Tales”. Her final months are ones of illness, poverty, mounting debts and depression.

Mary Robinson died on 26th December 1800 at Englefield Cottage, Englefield Green in Surrey, England. She is buried at St Peter and St Andrew’s Churchyard in Old Windsor, Berkshire, England. Her dying wish is for her daughter Maria to see the rest of her works published. These, as well as “Memoirs”, are published after her death.

Mary Robinson published her first volume of poems in 1775. She presented Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire with a copy and was offered support by the Duchess. Her second volume of poems in 1777 was dedicated to her patron. From 1788 she wrote poetry for a number of national newspapers as well as some articles for magazines and novels. She was a strong supporter of the French Revolution and wrote about it in a poem of 1790. Her poetry was influenced by other Romantic poets, including William Wordsworth and her “Lyrical Tales” of 1800 was inspired by Wordsworth and Coleridge’s “Lyrical Ballads”. She counted Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a friend and he described her “as a woman of undoubted genius” and said that she helped inspire his poem “Kubla Khan”.

In her work she satirised the merchant class and this attracted her to other rebels of the day whom and she became friends with the philosopher William Godwin in 1796 and through him the early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. She wrote anti-slavery poems and a feminist essay in 1799 and was a champion of education for girls. She was also influenced by the poet and novelist Charlotte Smith and experimented with the latter’s use of the sonnet for her poetry. In the last ten years of her short life she published four collections of poems, seven novels, a play, two political tracts, a translation, and many individual poems which appeared in newspapers under pseudonyms such as Laura, Laura Maria, Sappho , Oberon, Julia, Lesbia, Portia, Bridget and Tabitha Bramble.

Sadly her reputation has been coloured by her early life. One of five children she was educated by private tutors, until her father’s ventures left the family in debt and her parents separated after he went off with his mistress. She then moved to London where she was sent to a finishing school in Marylebone. She married Thomas Robinson aged fourteen in 1773 in order to have someone to look after her but the marriage was always loveless and he had no money. Robinson fell deeply into debt and in 1774 they fled to Tregunter in Wales where Mary had her first child, Maria Elizabeth. After their return to London her husband was arrested and incarcerated in the Fleet prison where she lived with him and began to write poetry. She then took up acting with the help of the actor manager David Garrick and appeared as Juliet in William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in 1776. In her final season in 1779 she played Perdita in “The Winter’s Tale” and for ever after was known as Perdita largely because of her skill but because the then Prince of Wales (later King George the Fourth) thought her attractive and she started a notorious relationship with him. She agreed to become his mistress for a promised £20,000 but the Prince quickly abandoned her without paying the money. Her reputation now destroyed it meant the end of her career and she was paid £5,000 by the Royal Family in exchange for her returning the prince’s love letters and not going to the newspapers. The Liberal politician Charles James Fox later helped her negotiate a £500 annuity but it was rarely paid. She became well known in fashionable London circles and was frequently caricatured and painted. Constant tales of her sexual life were published in daily newspapers and semi-pornographic magazines such as “The Ranger’s”.

She left London and escaped to Paris where she was feted by Dukes and even Queen Marie Antoinette herself who saw her as a fashion icon. Returning to London she began a fifteen-year affair with Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a hero of the American War of Independence. On her second trip to France she either had a miscarriage or was exposed to a major cold but at any rate she became paralysed below the waist. In 1797 she separated from Colonel Tarleton and, as her financial situation declined so did her health and she went to live with her daughter in Englefield Green, near Egham. 

She continued her extravagant lifestyle and bought expensive clothes and carriages even though she couldn’t always pay her debtors. One biographer even believed she ended up in a debtor’s prison in her final year.

As a poet she was known as one of the Della Cruscan poets, a group known for its over sentimental and ornamental style of poetry. She was also known as “The English Sapho” in part due to her famous poem in 1796 “Sappho and Phaon”. Her first novel the gothic “Vancenza, or the Dangers of Credulity” in 1792 sold out in a day however this may have been due to the reputation of “Perdita” rather than her writing prowess. The critics of the day did not like it however. At the time the novel was seen as a lower art form than poetry but both Robinson and Smith needed the money they brought in. Despite her sympathies for the French Revolution she wrote a poem and essay entitled “Marie Antionette’s Lamentation” and “Impartial Reflections on the Present Situation of the Queen of France” as she thought the Queen had been wrongly treated. She herself was used as a lesson to young girls about the dangers of promiscuity and seeking pleasure and it was not until 1824, after her death, that the “Poetical Works of The Late Mrs. Robinson” was published. Her controversial play “Nobody: A Comedy in Two Acts” was said at the time to have offended fashionable women and quickly curtailed her career as a dramatist. Nevertheless, she was one of the first women to become a successful writer overall.

List of works by Mary Robinson.