Robinson, Mary, Prose

Abstract

Mary Robinson (née Darby) emerged as a prominent poet and novelist in the early 1790s, a decade after she resigned her position as an actress at Drury Lane and won notoriety as mistress of the Prince of Wales (later George IV). Born in Bristol in the West Country, Robinson dazzled the 17‐year‐old Prince in 1779 while she was playing the role of Per dita in a command performance of Shakespeare's Winter's Tale , altered by her mentor David Garrick. In 1780, after receiving numerous promises of the Prince's eternal devotion, Robinson retired from the stage at his request, left her shiftless husband, and became widely known as ‘Perdita’, a tainted version of the romantic heroine who marries Prince Florizel in The Winter's Tale . Within less than a year, the Prince deserted Robinson, and she became a target of scurrilous attacks in the popular press. During her subsequent 15‐year liaison with Banastre Tarleton (1754–1833), Robinson became adept at using the press as an instrument of self‐promotion and forged a new identity as a fashionable woman of letters. In the late 1790s, however, Robinson's association with the radical circle of William Godwin and her searing critiques of social injustice provoked virulent attacks from the reactionary anti‐Jacob in press and strained her relationship with Tarleton. After they finally parted in 1797, Tarleton moved up in the world through his marriage to a young heiress while Robinson, plagued by failing health and the demands of menacing creditors, struggled to earn a living by her pen.