Mary Brunton

• Illustration — The grave of Rev. Alexander Brunton and his wife Mary, Canongate Kirkyard Brunton started her first novel, Self-Control, in 1809 and it appeared in 1811. One admirer was Charlotte Barrett (1786–1870), niece of the novelists Frances Burney and Sarah Burney and mother of the writer Julia Maitland. Writing to Sarah on 17 May 1811, Charlotte commented: "I read Self-Countroul & like it extremely all except some vulgarity meant to be jocular which tired me to death, but I think the principal character charming & well supported & the book really gives good lessons." Jane Austen had reservations, judging it in a letter as an "excellently-meant, elegantly-written work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it." Brunton, in contrasting self-control with sensibility, was moving towards a redefinition of femininity. Self-Control was widely read and went into a third edition in 1812. A French translation (Laure Montreville, ou l'Empire sur soimême) appeared in Paris in 1829. The anonymous novels Things by their Right Names (1812) and Rhoda by Frances Jacson were initially ascribed to her as well. The other novel that Brunton completed was Discipline (1814). Like Walter Scott's Waverley, published in the same year, it was much appreciated for its Highland scenes. It reappeared twice in two years. The Bruntons spent some time in London in 1815 and Brunton began to learn Gaelic in the same year. She then planned a series of domestic stories, of which one, Emmeline, was far enough advanced when she died for her husband to include it in an 1819 memorial volume, along with a Memoir and extracts from her travel diary. The story describes with a sympathy unusual in the period how a divorced woman's marriage is destroyed by her feelings of guilt and the ostracism she suffers. The success of Brunton's novels seems to have lain in combining a strongly moral, religious stance with events that stretched or broke the rules of society. Although the presence of "pulsating sexuality" may be an exaggeration, her heroines certainly "experience destitution struggling to survive as women on their own and enter the dark night of the soul, but rise from the depths of despair through a growing religious strength." According to Fay Weldon, "Improving the Brunton novels may be, but what fun they are to read, rich in invention, ripe with incident, shrewd in comment, and erotic in intention and fact." The Works of Mary Brunton appeared in 1820 and further editions of her first two novels in 1832, 1837 and 1852. However, their immediate popularity was somewhat short-lived: "They rose very fast into celebrity, and their popularity seems to have as quickly sunk away," as her husband put it in retrospect. Modern editions have appeared of Self-Control (London: Pandora Press, 1986), Discipline (London: Pandora Press, 1986; Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1987) and Emmeline (London: Routledge, 1992, facsimile of the 1819 edition).