Sacred Quest: Life&Writings Of Butts

Now that Mary Butts's writings are largely back in print after long neglect, Christopher Wagstaff's indispensible sourcebook, A Sacred Quest: The Life and Writings of Mary Butts, gathers essays from writers who knew Mary Butts and her work in the '20s and '30s, and from writers today who have reappraised her. There is a representative selection of Mary Butts's own poetry, fiction, journal entries, letters and literary criticism, as well as new interviews with Quentin Bell, Virgil Thomson, Hugh Ross Williamson and Eugene MacCown, along with up-to-date bibliographical information. Combining the personal dimensions of literary biography with original source materials and first-rate criticism, A Sacred Quest provides a valuable key to a major modern author whose importance is only now being understood in the history of Modernism, feminism and the avant-garde.

"Mary Butts is one of a number of fascinating women writers from the period between the wars (Djuna Barnes, Olive Moore, Mina Loy) who underwent a period of neglect before being rediscovered — usually by small presses like McPherson. A Sacred Quest is an excellent introduction to her work as well as an indispensable tool for future criticism. There are reminiscences from contemporaries of hers like Bryher, Glenway Wescott, Virgil Thomson, and Quentin Bell, reprints of the few essays that have been written about her, new essays by a half-dozen others, various pieces by Butts herself (including an interview), a chronology of her life, and a lengthy checklist of all of Butts's writings and reviews of her works. In addition, a number of photographs of Butts are reproduced throughout the book. This is independent publishing at its best." — The Review of Contemporary Fiction (16.1)