Mary Butts

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Standard Name: Butts, Mary
Birth Name: Mary Franeis Butts
Pseudonym: Mark Drury
Married Name: Mary Franeis Rodker
Married Name: Mary Franeis Atkin
MB published five novels, three collections of short stories, some poems, a memoir, and several essays (one of which denounces the Bloomsbury Group). Her subjects ranged from the Great War and war trauma to history, religion, mysticism, and classical mythology. Her expressions of ecological concern (laments for the destruction of nature and the countryside by hikers and industrialisation) take a conservative, elitist, even racialist stance and set a premium on authentic Englishness. Beginning her career as a modernist, MB attracted considerable attention and praise (together with controversy) during her lifetime. By the time of her death she was seen primarily as a religious or mystical writer, and after it her writing remained largely neglected until a revival of interest in the 1990s.
Sepia photograph of Mary Butts, smiling, seated with her head turned to the side. She is wearing a dark, wide-brimmed hat and a loose-fitting shirt with a smocked yoke and pockets on each side, fastened at the neck with lacing. Her dark hair is short and curly, worn with dangling earrings.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
Though emotionally empty, the marriage was artistically productive. Most significantly, Bryher's introductions and family funds allowed McAlmon to establish his influential press, Contact Editions . Thus, Bryher's money and social connections enabled the publication of...
Friends, Associates Naomi Royde-Smith
NRS was a close friend of Rose Macaulay , with whom in the immediate postwar period she shared entertaining duties at her flat, in something similar to a salon. They apparently met through Macaulay contributing...
Friends, Associates Dorothy Richardson
The Montparnasse group with whom they visited included Ernest and Hadley Hemingway , Sylvia Beach , Mary Butts , Nancy Cunard , Cecil Maitland , Mina Loy , and Nina Hamnett . Richardson was disappointed...
Friends, Associates H. D.
In the 1920s, while HD and Bryher were living rootlessly, sometimes in London, sometimes in Europe, HD's list of acquaintances grew to include Gertrude Stein , Alice B. Toklas , Ernest Hemingway , James Joyce
Friends, Associates Sylvia Beach
Among the first subscribers were Thérèse Bertrand (later Fontaine) , André Gide , Dorothy and Ezra Pound , and Gertrude Stein .
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace, 1959.
22, 26-7
With the loyal support of French literary figures such as Valery Larbaud
Textual Production James Tiptree Jr.
JTJ published a novel which she titled from a line by Thomas Nashe (which Mary Butts had borrowed for a title before this): Brightness Falls from the Air.
Nashe , writing in fear in...
Textual Production Bryher
Desmond MacCarthy had launched Life and Letters in June 1928; it issued its last number this month, and Bryher's new publication first appeared in September. It merged it with the London Mercury after May 1939...

Timeline

24 April 1932: Five hundred people, mostly male industrial...

Building item

24 April 1932

Five hundred people, mostly male industrial workers, set out on what became known as the Kinder Scout trespass, claiming the public right to roam on privately-owned open land.
Hattersley, Roy. “The peak of protest”. Guardian Unlimited, 24 Apr. 2007.

Texts

Blaser, Robin et al. “Afterword”. Imaginary Letters, Talonbooks, 1979, pp. 61-80.
Butts, Mary. Armed with Madness. A. and C. Boni, 1928.
Butts, Mary. Ashe of Rings. Three Mountain Press, 1925.
Butts, Mary. “Bloomsbury”. Modernism/Modernity, edited by Camilla Bagg et al., Vol.
5
, No. 2, pp. 32-45.
Butts, Mary. Death of Felicity Taverner. Wishart, 1932.
Butts, Mary, and Jean Cocteau. Imaginary Letters. E. W. Titus, 1928.
Blondel, Nathalie, and Mary Butts. “Introduction”. The Journals of Mary Butts, edited by Nathalie Blondel and Nathalie Blondel, Yale University Press, 2002, pp. 1-41.
Butts, Mary. Last Stories. Brendin Publishing, 1938.
Ashbery, John, and Mary Butts. “Preface”. From Altar to Chimney-Piece: Selected Stories, McPherson, 1992, p. vii - xii.
Butts, Mary. Scenes from the Life of Cleopatra. William Heinemann, 1935.
Butts, Mary. Several Occasions. Wishart, 1932.
Butts, Mary. “Speed the Plough”. Women, Men and the Great War: An Anthology of Stories, edited by Trudi Tate, Manchester University Press, 1995.
Butts, Mary. Speed the Plough and Other Stories. Chapman and Hall, 1923.
Butts, Mary. The Crystal Cabinet. Metheun, 1937.
Butts, Mary. The Macedonian. W. Heinemann, 1933.
Butts, Mary. Traps for Unbelievers. Desmond Harmsworth, 1932.
Butts, Mary. Warning to Hikers. Wishart, 1932.