Mary Frere

Photographic portrait of a lady, probably Mary Frere, by the royal photographers Walery of 164 Regent Street, London, made between 1888 and 1896. Cory Library. Mary Eliza Isabella Frere (11 August 1845 – 26 March 1911) was an English author of works regarding India. In 1868, Frere published the first English-language field-collected book of Indian fairy tales, Old Deccan Days.

Early life Frere was born in 1845 at the rectory of Bitton in Gloucestershire, England. At age 18, she joined him in India, where he served as Governor of Bombay until 1867. The extensive background and 'Narrator's Narrative' supplied in the work is unusual for the period, placing the tales in the context of the difficult life of the teller. The book was a success; by the time of the third English edition (1881) it was printed in German, Hungarian, Danish, Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati languages.

In the introduction to his 1892 Indian volume of fairy tales, Joseph Jacobs reprinted and acknowledged Frere's contribution to these:

Though Indian fairy tales are the earliest in existence, yet they are also from another point of view the youngest. For it is only about twenty-five years ago that Miss Frere began the modern collection of Indian folk-tales with her charming "Old Deccan Days".

After Lady Clark's death Catherine edited The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie, helping to publish it in 1909 at the invitation of the late author's husband Sir John Forbes Clark. The work was praised by the novelist Virginia Woolf and the cookery writer Elizabeth David.

Death and commemoration Frere died in 1911 in St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, after a long period of ill health. She is buried at Brookwood Cemetery.