Abstract
Mary Berry (1763–1852) was an important contributor to the intellectual and literary culture of the Romantic period as an editor, biographer, historian, and life writer, who travelled extensively in Europe and hosted an illustrious salon in the tradition of the bluestockings. Renowned for her friendship with Horace Walpole, whose works she posthumously edited, she also experimented as a playwright and commentated on the theatre. As an editor and biographer, she introduced her contemporaries to the letters of Marie Du Deffand (1697–1780) and Lady Rachel Russell (1636–1723). These editions were followed by two comparative social and cultural histories of England and France, covering from the Restoration to the present. Her posthumously published journals and letters provide a rich example of women’s life writing in the Romantic period and testify to the extent of her social and intellectual connections.
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References
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[Berry, Mary]. 1802. The Fashionable Friends; a Comedy, in Five acts. 2nd ed. London: J. Ridgway.
———, ed. 1810. Letters of the Marquise du Deffand to the Hon. Horace Walpole. 4 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme.
———, ed. 1819. Some Account of the Life of Rachael Wriothesley Lady Russell. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown.
———, 1828. A Comparative View of the Social Life of England and France from the Restoration of Charles the Second to the French Revolution. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green.
———, 1831. Social Life in England and France from the French revolution in 1789 to that of July 1830. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green.
———, 1840. Advertisement. The Letters of Horace Walpole. 6 vols. London: Richard Bentley.
———, 1865. Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the year 1783 to 1852. Edited by Lady Theresa Lewis. 3 vols. London: Longmans, Green and Co.
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———. 2019. ‘A Journal of my Feelings, Mind & Body’: Narratives of Ageing in the Life Writing of Mary Berry (1763–1852). Romanticism, ‘Romanticism and Ageing’ 25 (3): 291–302.
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Further Reading
Culley, Amy. 2017. “Ageing, Authorship, and Female Networks in the Life Writing of Mary Berry (1763–1852) and Joanna Baillie (1762–1851).” In Women’s Literary Networks and Romanticism: “A tribe of authoresses”, ed. Andrew O. Winckles and Angela Rehbein, 73–98. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Melville, Lewis. 1914. The Berry Papers. London: John Lane.
Slagle, Judith Bailey. 2010. “Sisters – Ambition and Compliance: The case of Mary and Agnes Berry and Joanna and Agnes Baillie.” In Woman to Woman: Female Negotiations during the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Carolyn D. Williams, Angela Escott, and Louise Duckling, 79–100. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
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Culley, A. (2023). Berry, Mary. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Romantic-Era Women's Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11945-4_16-2
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