Mary Balfour
| Mary Brunton | |
|---|---|
Mary Brunton, from the 2nd ed. of Emmeline (1820)
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| Born |
Mary Balfour 1 November 1778 |
| Died | 7 December 1818 (aged 40) |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Occupation | novelist |
Mary Brunton (née Balfour) (1 November 1778 – 7 December 1818) was a Scottish novelist. Her novels redefine femininity. Fay Weldon praised them as "rich in invention, ripe with incident, shrewd in comment, and erotic in intention and fact."
Mary was the daughter of Colonel Thomas Balfour of Elwick, a British Army officer and Frances Ligonier, daughter of Colonel Francis Ligonier and sister of the second earl of Ligonier. She was born on 1 November 1778 on Burray 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 eloped with Brunton on 4 December 1798, when her loved one rescued her from the island of Gairsay in a rowing boat. He was minister at Bolton, near Haddington until 1797, then at two successive Edinburgh parishes: at New Greyfriars from 1803 and Tron from 1809, becoming in the meantime professor of oriental languages at the university in 1813.
Their marriage was a happy, but childless one. Guided by her husband, she developed some interest in philosophy, and remarked in a letter to her sister-in-law that she was in favour of women learning ancient languages and mathematics, which was still a rare female accomplishment in that period. The couple made a tour to Harrogate and the English Lake District in 1809, although the former did not meet with her approval: "A scene without a hill seems to me to be about as interesting as a face without a nose!" (p. xxxii, Introduction)
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