Mary Brunton
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Mary Brunton née Balfour (1 November 1778 - 7 December 1818) was a Scottish novelist.
[edit] Biography
Mary was the daughter Colonel Thomas Balfour of Elwick, a British Army officer and Frances Ligonier, sister of the second earl of Ligonier. She was born on 1 November 1778 in the Orkney Islands. Mary's early education was limited, though her mother did teach her music, Italian, and French.
Around 1798, Mary met and fell in love with the Reverend Alexander Brunton, a Church of Scotland minister, who later became a Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of Edinburgh. Although Mary's mother disapproved of the match, she married Brunton in 1798 and they had a happy marriage, which included companionship and mutual interests. After twenty years of marriage, Mary finally became pregnant at age forty, but she died in 1818 in Edinburgh after giving birth to a still-born son.
Brunton started to write her first novel in 1809. Like many of her fellow novelists, she also recorded bits and pieces of daily life in a journal. In her lifetime, Brunton wrote two complete novels, Self-Control (1811) and Discipline (1814). After her death, her unfinished work Emmeline, along with a Memoir, was published by her husband in 1819.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] External links
This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.
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