Mary Butts, Armed with Madness

Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Ed. by Andrew Radford, University of Glasgow
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Birmingham Newman University), Atasoy Emrah (University of Warwick), Louise McDonald (Birmingham Newman University), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1928

Places

England (Publication/ performance; Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Recommended Reading

Armed with Madness

, the first of the two “Taverner Novels”

by the Dorset-born author Mary Butts (1890-1937), was published in 1928 by Wishart & Co. in the UK and A. & C. Boni in the US. The text, a formally innovative retelling of the Grail myth,

charts the romantic, artistic, and psychological struggles of a clique of young bohemians living in rustic solitude in the southwest of England, “[Thomas] Hardy’s country” (

AWM

, pp. 10-11). The dramatic action pivots around the discovery of a peculiar trinket from a drought-shrunken well that may be, in the words of Butts’s admired contemporary Arthur Machen, “the glorious object of the greatest of all Legends” (Machen, p. 747). The central protagonist, Scylla Taverner, portrayed as the venturesome “damsel” of the “Grail”,…

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1515 words

Citation: Radford, Andrew. "Armed with Madness". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 July 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=39186, accessed 17 May 2024.]

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