Mary Robinson (née Darby and also known as Perdita) was born in Bristol on 27 November 1758 to John Darby (a whaling captain) and Hester Vanacott, though the accuracy of the date is disputed. When her father attempted but failed to establish permanent cod, salmon, and seal fishing posts on the southern coast of Labrador in 1765, she was moved, on the separation of her parents, from her Bristol home to London in 1768. Taught by the talented dipsomaniac Merinah Lorington, Robinson was instructed in languages, mathematics, and sciences. When her mother set up her own school in Little Chelsea (around 1771), Robinson instructed the students in English before her father insisted that the school be shut, and she then attended a finishing school in Marylebone where her interest in acting brought her into David Garrick’s sphere. Under pressure from her mother, she married Thomas Robinson, an articled clerk, on 12 April 1773 at St Martin‐in‐the‐Fields, Westminster. However, his charm allowed him to conceal his real financial status, and the couple fell into penury, with Robinson nursing her first daughter (Mary Elizabeth, born 1774) in a debtor’s prison cell where her husband was sent in 1775.
While in prison, Robinson wrote and published her first volume of poetry, Poems, in 1775, part funded by Georgiana Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire. David Garrick and Richard Brinsley Sheridan encouraged and facilitated her stage debut as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and Robinson became an overnight star, going on to play many of Shakespeare’s heroines and several other roles in various productions. She also brought out Captivity: A Poem in 1777. In full public view, she became the mistress of the teenage Prince of Wales in 1779. Though promised a fortune, £20,000, she did not receive the money when he eventually tired of her. An ugly battle ensued between the Prince and Robinson, and she was showered in public ignominy. Despite managing to extract £5,000 from the royal family thanks to the intercession of her new lover, Lord Maldon, Robinson never went back on stage. Her 1781 visit to France confirmed her as both a woman of fashion and a notorious figure, and she was thought to have had a series of high‐profile romances, including with Charles James Fox (who secured for her an annuity of £500). However, during the summer of 1783, she became paralysed from the waist down at the age of twenty‐four, perhaps owing to a miscarriage. When she was partly recovered, she was forced abroad by her creditors and returned to France where she apparently assisted her lover, Colonel Banastre Tarleton, to write his History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America.
She returned to London in January 1788, and by the autumn, writing under the nom de plume Laura, Robinson began a public poetry exchange with ‘Leonardo’ (Robert Merry) in The World, aligning herself with the increasingly influential group the Della Cruscans, writers marked by an emphasis on sentiment and a much‐mocked rhetoric of affect. Though briefly lauded, the group swiftly fell from grace, but Robinson continued to write. Though her first volume of collected poems (1791) was a triumph, her second volume (1794) was far less successful. Despite this disappointment, Robinson was not without poetic admirers. Coleridge, in particular, exchanged letters and poetry with her, and Wordsworth admired her Lyrical Tales (1800). Robinson was close to her daughter, and died at her home in Englefield Green on 26 December 1800 of dropsy. Her short and eventful life made her a prominent and fascinating figure in her lifetime, and increasing critical attention has re‐evaluated her significance as a poet, journalist, and writer.
Claire Brock, ‘Mary Robinson’, The Literary Encyclopedia, first published 21 March 2002 [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3820, accessed 9 September 2015]; Martin J. Levy, ‘Robinson, Mary [Perdita] (1756/1758?–1800)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23857, accessed 9 September 2015]; Mary Robinson (1756/1758?–1800): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/23857; Duncan Wu, ‘Mary Robinson (1758–1800)’, in Romanticism: An Anthology, ed. Duncan Wu, 4th edn (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2012), pp. 250–3.