Mary Butts

Mary Frances Butts (13 December 1890 – 5 March 1937), also Mary Rodker by marriage, was an English modernist writer. Her work found recognition in literary magazines such as The Bookman and The Little Review, as well as from fellow modernists, T. S. Eliot, H.D. and Bryher. After her death, her works fell into obscurity until they began to be republished in the 1980s.

Life Butts was born on 13 December 1890 in Poole, Dorset, the daughter of Mary Jane (née Briggs) and Captain Frederick John Butts. She had a younger brother, Anthony. In later life she and her brother were estranged. Her great-grandfather was Thomas Butts, the friend of William Blake, the poet and artist. In 1906 her mother sold the Blake paintings and in 1907 remarried. From 1909 to 1912 Mary studied at Westfield College in London, where she first became aware of her bisexual feelings. She did not complete a degree there, but was sent down for organising a trip to Epsom races. She went on to study at the London School of Economics, from which she graduated in 1914.

She became a student of the occultist Aleister Crowley. She and other students worked with Crowley on his Magick (Book 4) (1912) and were given co-authorship credit.

In 1916, she began keeping the diary which she would maintain until the year of her death.

In the first years of World War I, she was living in London, undertaking social work for the London County Council in Hackney Wick, and in a lesbian relationship. She then met the modernist poet, John Rodker, a pacifist at that time hiding in Dorking with fellow poet and pacifist Robert Trevelyan. In May 1918 she married Rodker, and in November 1920 gave birth to their daughter, Camilla Elizabeth. Butts also adopted Rodker's pacifism. who illustrated her book, Imaginary Letters (1928). In mid-1921 she and Maitland spent about twelve weeks at Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Sicily; she found the practices there shocking, and came away with a drug habit. In 1922 and 1923 she and Maitland spent periods near Tyneham, Dorset, and her novels of the 1920s make much of the Dorset landscape. In 1923 her book of stories, Speed the Plough and other stories was published; which was followed in 1925 by her first novel, Ashe of Rings (published by Robert McAlmon). Ashe of Rings is an anti-war novel with supernatural elements.

In 1927, she and Rodker were divorced. In 1928, Butts published Armed with Madness a novel featuring experimental Modernist writing revolving around the Grail legend. In 1930, she married the homosexual artist, William Park "Gabriel" Atkin or Aitken (1897–1937) (Mary then styled herself Mrs Aitken, but retained her maiden name for her writings). After a time in London and Newcastle, they settled in 1932 at Sennen on the Penwith peninsula on the western tip of Cornwall, but by 1934 the marriage had failed.

Butts was an ardent advocate of nature conservation, and attacked the pollution of the English countryside in her pamphlets Warning To Hikers and Traps For Unbelievers.

Legacy A portrait of Mary Butts was painted in 1924 by Cedric Morris, and a portrait drawing of her was made by Jean Cocteau (reproduced as a frontispiece to her memoir, The Crystal Cabinet).

Mary Butts's papers are held at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. A biography, Mary Butts: Scenes from the Life by Nathalie Blondel, was published in 1998.

Published works 1912: Magick (Book 4), by Aleister Crowley, Butts given co-authorship credit 1923: Speed the Plough and other Stories 1925: Ashe of Rings 1928: Armed with Madness 1928: Imaginary Letters 1932: Death of Felicity Taverner 1932: Traps for Unbelievers 1932: Several Occasions 1932: Warning to Hikers 1933: The Macedonian (a study of Alexander the Great) 1935: Scenes from the Life of Cleopatra 1937: The Crystal Cabinet: My Childhood at Salterns (memoir) 1938: Last Stories

Reprints by McPherson & Co 1992: From Altar to Chimney-Piece: Selected Stories. Preface by John Ashbery. 1992: The Taverner Novels: Armed with Madness & Death of Felicity Taverner. Preface by Paul West; afterword by Barbara Wagstaff. 1994: The Classical Novels: The Macedonian & Scenes from the Life of Cleopatra. Preface by Thomas McEvilley. 1998: Ashe of Rings and Other Writings. Preface by Nathalie Blondel. 2014: The Complete Stories of Mary Butts. Preface by John Ashbery; foreword by Bruce R. McPherson. 2021: The Collected Essays of Mary Butts. Edited and introduced by Joel Hawkes, with Bruce R. McPherson