Beatrice Barmby

Beatrice Helen Barmby (1868–1900) was an English author and poet who wrote English-language adaptations of Old Norse literature. Her works include the play Gísli súrsson: a Drama and poetry based on Laxdæla saga and The Waking of Angantýr.

Life Barmby was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1868 to Unitarian minister John Goodwyn Barmby and his second wife Ada Marianne (née Shepherd), a suffragist. She was disabled from childhood after a back injury.

Barmby studied Icelandic with the scholar Eiríkur Magnússon and produced translations of, and poetry based on, Old Norse literature. All her works were published posthumously by her sister Maria.

Publications Gísli Súrsson: A Drama. Ballads and Poems of the Old Norse Days and Some Translations (1900) Rosslyn’s Raid and Other Tales (short story collection, 1903) Poems (1903) "The Lay of Thrym" (translation of the poem Thrymskviða, published in Saga-Book of the Viking Club 3, 1903) novel