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I was the only daughter of Dr George Mitford. I was born at Alresford, Hampshire.

My place in English literature is as the author of Our Village, a series of brilliant sketches of village scenes and characters vividly drawn. My father spent my mother's fortune in a few years (hahahaha); then he spent the greater part of £20,000, which in 1797 I, then aged ten, drew as a prize in a lottery (fucking idiot); from then on he lived on a small remnant of his fortune and the proceeds of my literary career (men!).

He is thought to have inspired me with the keen delight in incongruities, the lively sympathy, self-willed vigorous individuality, and the womanly tolerance which inspire so many of my sketches of character. This is, however, crap. I did it all myself.

I was quite devoted to him. I tended to refuse all holiday invitations because he could not live without me (wanker), and worked incessantly for him except when I took a break to read him the sporting newspapers (which was fascinating, I must say - /sarcasm).

My writing has all the charm of unaffected spontaneous humour, combined with quick wit and literary skill.

I met Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1836, and our acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship (that does not mean we were lesbians, although we may have been. I am not saying).

The strain of poverty told on my work, for although my books sold at high prices, my income did not keep pace with my father's extravagances (bastrad).

In 1837, however, I received a civil list pension, and five years later my father died (praise LLama).

A subscription was raised to pay his debts, and the surplus my income. I eventually moved to a cottage at Swallowfield, near Reading, Berkshire, where I remained for the rest of my life.

My youthful ambition had been to be the greatest English poetess, and my first publications were poems in the manner of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Walter Scott (Miscellaneous Verses, 1810, reviewed by Scott in the Quarterly; Christine, a metrical tale, 1811; Blanche, 1813). However, I was always better than any of those stupid men.

My play Julian was produced at Covent Garden, with William Charles Macready in the title role, in 1823; The Foscari was performed at Covent Garden, with Charles Kemble as the hero, in 1826; Rienzi, 1828, the best of my plays, had a run of thirty-four nights, and my friend, Thomas Noon Talfourd, imagined that its vogue militated against the success of his own play Ion (which it did).

Charles the First was refused a licence by the Lord Chamberlain, but was played at the Surrey Theatre in 1834 (ha!).

The prose, to which I was driven by domestic necessities, was more successful than my verse. The first series of Our Village sketches appeared in 1824, a second in 1826, a third in 1828, a fourth in 1830, a fifth in 1832. They were reprinted several times.

Belford Regis, a novel in which the neighborhood and society of Reading were idealized, was published in 1835.

My Recollections of a Literary Life (1852) is a series of causeries about my favourite books.

My talk was said by my friends, Elizabeth Browning and Hengist Horne, to have been even more amusing than my books, and five volumes of my Life and Letters, published in 1870 and 1872, show me to have been a delightful letter-writer.

All in all, I am a fascinating person.

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