Marie Clothilde Balfour


Marie Clothilde Balfour was a British writer, translator, and folklorist. She wrote three novels, stories, and plays; translated poetry and a French Revolution-era memoir; collected folk stories and songs; and edited two volumes of letters from her aunt.

Early life and education

Balfour was born in Edinburgh, the daughter of James Balfour, a noted engineer, and Christina Simson Balfour. Writer Robert Louis Stevenson was her first cousin. She spent her early years in New Zealand while her father was working there; when he died in 1869, she returned to Scotland with her mother.

Publications

Balfour wrote three novels, translated a French Revolution-era memoir, and edited two volumes of letters from her aunt, Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson, sent during her travels with her son in Polynesia. She also wrote plays and stories, and collected folklore from Northumberland and Lincolnshire. "From time to time doubts have been expressed about the authenticity of the tales that Marie Clothilde Balfour said she had collected," notes one scholar, because the tales she published were especially strange, and she certainly added her own literary flourishes.
  • "Legends of the Lincolnshire Cars"
  • White Sand
  • Maris Stella
  • "Sub Tegmine Fagi"
  • The Fall of the Sparrow
  • "Saint Joseph and Mary, from a French folk song"
  • From Saranac to the Marquesas and beyond; being letters written by Mrs. M. I. Stevenson during 1887–88, to her sister, Jane Whyte Balfour
  • Examples of printed folk-lore concerning Northumberland
  • Memoirs of Mlle des Écherolles, being sidelights on the Reign of Terror
  • Mrs. M. I. Stevenson, ''Letters from Samoa, 1891–1895''

    Personal life

Balfour married her first cousin, physician James Craig Balfour; they had a daughter, Marie Margaret Melville Balfour, who also became a writer. Balfour's husband died in 1907, and she died in London in 1931.