In this reincarnation as a literary figure, Robinson hungered for the recognition which could revise the reputation she had gained in her early years (‘AMBITION fires my breast!’) and these three biographies set themselves the same task. Byrne makes the greatest claims for literature’s debt to Robinson, suggesting that she may have anticipated Coleridge, De Quincey and Keats in discussing the effects of opiates in poetry, and approvingly cites one modern critic’s claim that ‘Tennyson’s “Mariana” could not have been written without Mary Robinson’s experiments to create a new lyric form in English verse’. That her presence was felt in the Romantic landscape is undeniable (Wordsworth even considered changing the title of the second volume of Lyrical Ballads to avoid confusion with — or contamination by — Robinson’s own collection, Lyrical Tales), but whether her work is deserving of the degree of attention it is currently being paid remains a largely unasked question.
Her most interesting writing, whether in her novels or her essays, is on the subject of women’s place in the world. Her self-promotion (which can be toe-curling, especially in her poetry) is here more appropriately channelled as a voice for her sex rather than herself, and is both angry and articulate in its denunciation of the double standard. Otherwise, she was an unexceptional actress, a sub- standard dramatist, a tolerable poet and a novelist who attracted popularity rather than regard. Had she not had such a rackety past, she would have excited less attention than she has.
Robinson was a true celebrity: the public was fascinated by what she wore, where she went and whom she slept with (a substantial list, including the politician Charles James Fox); she was famous for being famous. Her subsequent desire to be recognised for real achievements was never to be fulfilled. Had she been satisfied with less, she would doubtless have been happier; as the radical John Wilkes averred, ‘Life can little else supply/ But just a few good fucks and then we die.’
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