Mary Ethel Muir Donaldson

Mary Ethel Muir Donaldson known as M.E.M. Donaldson (19 May 1876 – 17 January 1958), was an early 20th century British author and photography pioneer, and described as an 'unconventional ethnographer'.

Life Her father, Alexander Murray Donaldson (1834-1883), had emigrated from Scotland to Adelaide, Australia and returned to settle with her mother, Mary Isabella Muir (1840-1926) to live in Norwood, Surrey, England, where Mary Ethel Muir Donaldson was born. In Croydon she met her life long friend, illustrator Isabel Bonus (whose family wealth also came from ship broking) and they moved to Scotland. (Isabel's aunt was the famous and unconventional Anna Kingsford (nee Bonus).)

She became a photographer to follow up her interest in her Scottish roots in the Clan Donald, in 1905 travelling to remote areas of Inverness-shire and Argyll with heavy photographic equipment. She wrote biographies of Scottish people (including herself) and also wrote about the religious differences in regions of Scotland. She was a 'High Anglican' and did not support the Scottish Presbyterian reformed church. She worked with her friend and companion Isabel Bonus on the illustrations for some of her travel books until 'watercolour became too expensive' and she then used 900 photographs for her book Wanderings in the Western Highlands (1921) and apologised for the image quality. at Sanna Bheag ("Little Sanna"), in Sanna, Ardnamurchan. It was modern but thus blended with the landscape, and included a built-in darkroom for her photographic processes. The Inverness Museum has an image of Donaldson and the house.

Bonus died in 1941, and the house burned down in 1947. Tonal Mactonal (1919) Wanderings in the Western Highlands (1921) Scotland's Suppressed History (1935) Scottish Biographies (1938) pub. Blackwood