Mathilde Cohen was born in 1841 in Mannheim, Germany to a Jewish banker and his second wife, Friederike Ettlinger. After Cohen died, her mother remarried to Karl Blind (1826-1907), a political writer who was involved in the insurrections in Baden during the 1848 European revolutions. Mathilde took her stepfather's name, and the Blinds moved to London, England as political refugees in 1852.

Mathilde Blind received some education at a series of girls' schools but was apparently more inspired by the political conversations she overheard at her parents' house, where other political refugees from the European continent met. In 1859 Blind traveled to Switzerland and undertook an Alps walking tour by herself, as well as studying with a group of revolutionaries.

In 1866 Blind's brother Ferdinand attempted to assassinate Otto von Bismarck, at the time the Prime Minister of Prussia. Ferdinand committed suicide in prison after the failed attempt, which had a profound affect on Blind. Throughout the rest of her life, she published poetry and essays, gave public lectures, wrote biographies, and translated German and French works into English. Her subjects included Guiseppe Manzinni, Percy Bysse Shelley, Lord Byron, George Eliot, the Scottish Highland clearances,and Darwinian theories of evolution, amongst other topics.

A feminist, Blind moved out of her parents' home at the age of 30 to live independently, never marrying. She belonged to a large circle of women Victorian authors and was closely associated with the Rosetti family, Ford Madox Brown, and Arthur Symons, amongst other literary and artistic figures of the late 19th century.

[Information retrieved from Srebrnik, Patricia, "Blind [nee Cohen], Mathilde," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.]