Mary Brunton

Mary Brunton (née Balfour) (1 November 1778 – 7 December 1818) was a Scottish novelist, whose work has been seen as redefining femininity. Fay Weldon praised Brunton's writings as "rich in invention, ripe with incident, shrewd in comment, and erotic in intention and fact."

Life Mary Balfour (married name Brunton) was the daughter of Colonel Thomas Balfour of Elwick, a British Army officer, and Frances Ligonier, daughter of Colonel Francis Ligonier and sister of the second earl of Ligonier. She was born on 1 November 1778 on Burray in the Orkney Islands. Her early education was limited, but her mother taught her music, Italian and French.

About 1798, she met the Rev. Alexander Brunton, a Church of Scotland minister. Although her mother disapproved of the match, she eloped with Brunton on 4 December 1798, when he rescued her from the island of Gairsay in a rowing boat. He was minister at Bolton, near Haddington, East Lothian, until 1797, then at two successive Edinburgh parishes: New Greyfriars from 1803 and Tron from 1809, becoming in the meantime Professor of Oriental Languages at the University in 1813. in Edinburgh, on 12 December 1818, five days after giving birth to a stillborn son. Jane Austen had reservations, judging it in a letter as an "excellently-meant, elegantly-written work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it." Brunton, in contrasting self-control with sensibility, was moving towards a redefinition of femininity. Self-Control was widely read and went into a third edition in 1812. A French translation (Laure Montreville, ou l'Empire sur soimême) appeared in Paris in 1829.

The Works of Mary Brunton appeared in 1820 and further editions of her first two novels in 1832, 1837 and 1852. Modern editions have appeared of Self-Control (London: Pandora Press, 1986), Discipline (London: Pandora Press, 1986; Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1987) and Emmeline (London: Routledge, 1992, facsimile of the 1819 edition).