Background

Donald Grant Mitchell was born on April 12, 1822, in Norwich, Connecticut. He was the son of the Rev. Alfred Mitchell, a Congregational minister, and Lucretia Mumford Woodbridge. He was the grandson of Stephen Mix Mitchell. His father died in 1831, his mother in 1839. A tubercular tendency inherited from the Woodbridges proved fatal to six of the nine children of his parents before 1846, and he himself overcame the disease only by good fortune.

Education

Mitchell prepared for college at John Hall's school, Ellington, Connecticut, then entered Yale, where in his last year he was an editor of the Yale Literary Magazine. As a student, he was alert and independent.

Career

Graduating in 1841, Mitchell retired to an ancestral farm in Salem township, New London County, Connecticut, where, after the manner of his father, he indulged his love for rural things and continued his literary work. In the autumn of 1844, he went as clerk to Joel W. White, consul to Liverpool, and remained in the consular office until January 1845, when failing health necessitated retirement to the milder climate of the island of Jersey. After resting for two months on the sands of St. Aubin's Bay he traveled from March 1845 to August 1846 over the British Isles and the Continent, much of the time on foot. This outdoor life so far overcame his pulmonary weakness that he returned to America in September 1846 in comparatively good health. From 1846 to 1855 Mitchell's life was unsettled. From Washington, D. C. , he wrote for the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer over the signature Ik Marvel, a name by which he later came to be well known. In New York under the guidance of John Osborne Sargent he read law "after a fashion, " but for the most part engaged in literary work. His first volume, Fresh Gleanings (1847), is a good record of his European travel. In June 1848, he went to Paris and wrote a series of thirty letters for the Courier and Enquirer on the progress of the revolution of that year. Upon his return to Sargent's office, he wrote his second book, The Battle Summer (1850), which treats of aspects of the revolution prior to those described in his newspaper correspondence. A projected sequel was never written. During 1850 he edited the Lorgnette, a journal designed to satirize the follies of New York society. His Reveries of a Bachelor (1850) was immediately popular. Fourteen thousand copies were sold within a year. It was followed in 1851 by Dream Life, which sold almost as well. In 1853, he went to Venice as United States consul. Resigning the Venetian consulate in February 1854, he resided in Paris until May 1855, when he returned to America. In June 1855 he purchased a two-hundred-acre farm, later increased to 360 acres, near New Haven, Connecticut, and named it "Edgewood. " His natural taste, cultivated by his residence abroad, recoiled from the ugliness of much in American life, and he set himself the task of arousing his countrymen to a sense of beauty in farming, home building, and town planning. "Edgewood" became an object lesson to pilgrims from all over America, and his series of Edgewood books propagated his gospel.

Achievements

• In 1843, the New York Agricultural Society awarded him a silver medal for plans of farm buildings. He contributed to the leading American periodicals from 1842 to 1897. The Edgewood edition of his Works in fifteen volumes was published in 1907.

Works

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  • My Farm of Edgewood: A Country Book (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from My Farm of Edgewood: A Country Book And yet...)

  • The Woodbridge Record: Being An Account Of The Descendants Of The Rev. John Woodbridge, Of Newbury, Mass

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Reveries of a Bachelor

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Reveries of a Bachelor or a Book of the Heart

    ("Reveries of a Bachelor or a Book of the Heart" from Dona...)

  • Wet Days at Edgewood: With Old Farmers, Old Gardeners, and Old Pastorals

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Fudge doings: being Tony Fudge's record of the same

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • The Works of Donald G. Mitchell: Dream life; a fable of the seasons, by the author of Reveries of a bachelor.''

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Dream Life: A Fable of the Seasons

Views

Quotations: "Coquetry whets the appetite; flirtation depraves it. Coquetry is the thorn that guards the rose - easily trimmed off when once plucked. Flirtation is like the slime on water-plants, making them hard to handle, and when caught, only to be cherished in slimy waters. "

"But wealth is a great means of refinement; and it is a security for gentleness, since it removes disturbing anxieties. "

"Hard, withering toil only can achieve a name; and long days and months and years must be passed in the chase of that bubble, reputation, which, when once grasped, breaks in your eager clutch into a hundred lesser bubbles, that soar above you still. "

"The Spaniards have a saying that there is no man whom Fortune does not visit at least once in his life. "

Personality

Mitchell was strikingly handsome and had a rare sense of humor. By temperament retiring and reserved, he was a delightful companion when once he gave his confidence. Calm and judicious, he was never an extremist. He always maintained a modest and apologetic attitude toward his own literary efforts, although he made a place for himself in American letters. He used the English language in its purest forms, achieving his effects by sincerity and simplicity rather than by display. Occasionally he tried his hand at a bit of verse, such as in his "To Torquatus" in Scribner's Magazine, March 1891.

Connections

On May 31, 1853, Mitchell married Mary Frances Pringle, of Charleston, S. C. .

Father:

Alfred Mitchell

Mother:

Lucretia Mumford Woodbridge

Wife:

Mary Frances Pringle Mitchell

1 February 1831 - 5 December 1901

Son:

Hesse Alston Mitchell

5 June 1854 - 27 December 1861

References

• The Life of Donald G. Mitchell: Ik Marvel (Classic Reprint)