Mary Butts in 1919 (public domain photo).
Every once in awhile, I run into a writer and wind up being surprised that I did not know the name. The modernist writer Mary Butts (1890-1937) would be the latest example.
I am on the email list for Standard Ebooks, an outfit I've written about before that makes available excellent free editions of public domain books. The latest newsletter announced the publication of the "influential but obscure modernist novel" Armed With Madness by Mary Butts:
"Six friends are staying in a cottage in the English countryside when they discover a mysterious ancient cup buried deep in a local well. The cup seems to have a long history—could it be the legendary Holy Grail? Long-held tensions start simmering as the friends begin investigating the cup’s story, threatening the formerly peaceful retreat.
"Butts adapts the grail myth to early 20th century England in a highly modernist prose style that invites comparison to Virginia Woolf or Ford Madox Ford. The narrative resembles a kaleidoscope in its shifting perspectives, abrupt dialogue, and dreamlike feel, and close reading reveals densely packed allusions ranging from Greek mythology to English legend.
"The first edition of Armed with Madness was illustrated by none other than Jean Cocteau and won praise from her modernist contemporaries. Butts went on to write a companion novel in 1932 following some of the same characters, The Death of Felicity Taverner."
Who knows what I'll think of Armed With Madness when I get around to reading it, but I saw other indications that, at the very least, Butts was an interesting person who hung out with other interesting people. The Wikipedia bio records that she was a student of Aleister Crowley and spent time with him at the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily. She knew modernist writers such as Ezra Pound. A biography is available, by Nathalie Blondel.
A university professor in Canada provides the Mary Butts Letters Project online. And here is an interesting piece from The New Yorker, "Modernism's Forgotten Mystic." That 2021 piece by Merve Emre describes Butts as pretty much forgotten, so maybe I get a pass for not knowing the name until a few days ago. Read the piece for the William Blake connection!










