Beatrice Barmby

Beatrice Barmby
Born
Beatrice Helen Barmby

(1868-07-03)3 July 1868
Wakefield, Yorkshire, England
Died9 January 1899(1899-01-09) (aged 30)
Salcombe Regis, Devon, England
FatherGoodwyn Barmby

Beatrice Helen Barmby (3 July 1868 – 9 January 1899) was an English author, poet, translator and scholar of Old Norse, who wrote English-language adaptations of Old Norse literature. Her works include the play Gísli súrsson: a Drama and poetry based on Laxdæla saga and The Waking of Angantýr.

Biography

Barmby was born on 3 July 1868 in Wakefield, Yorkshire to Goodwyn Barmby, a Unitarian minister, charitst, and socialist writer, and Ada Marianne (née Shepherd; 1832–1911), a suffragist. The younger sister of Mabel Katharine Barmby (1865–1945), Barmby had two older half-siblings from her father's first marriage to Catherine Isabella Barmby. Raised in an Unitarian household, the family moved to the village of Yoxford following her father's retirement in 1879. Sometime after her father's death in 1881, Barmby moved to Mount Pleasant in Salcombe Hill with her mother, sister and half sister. Barmby is thought to have been in bad health throughout her life, and became disabled during her childhood following a back injury. Listed as a scholar in the 1881 census, it's unclear if Barmby was educated at home or if she attended school like her sister Mabel.

Barmby studied Icelandic with the scholar Eiríkur Magnússon and produced translations of, and poetry based on, Old Norse literature. All her works were published posthumously by her sister Mabel. Her play based on Gísla saga, which was praised for its grasp of the Norse spirit, was read by the Viking Society in 1903 and translated into Icelandic by Matthías Jochumsson in 1902.

Publications

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Katarskytė, Auksė Beatričė (13 August 2026). "Barmby, Beatrice Helen (1868–1899), author, translator, and student of Old Norse". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000383334. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  2. 1 2 3 Katarskytė, Auksė Beatričė (2024). "The Feminist Potential of Beatrice Helen Barmby's Gísli Súrsson: A Drama". Scandinavistica Vilnensis. 17 (1): 155–175. doi:10.15388/ScandinavisticaVilnensis.2023.9. hdl:10852/104462. ISSN 2669-0497.
  3. ↑ Gregory, James (2014-10-10). The Poetry and the Politics: Radical Reform in Victorian England. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85773-619-2.
  4. ↑ Lee, Matthew (26 May 2005) [23 September 2004]. "Barmby, (John) Goodwyn (1820–1881), Chartist and socialist". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1445. Retrieved 27 July 2020. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  5. ↑ Davidson, H. R. Ellis (2024-01-25). Katharine Briggs: Story-Teller. Lutterworth Press. ISBN 978-0-7188-9750-5.
  6. ↑ "Beatrice H. Barmby". Census Returns of England and Wales, 1881; Suffolk; Yoxford. Kew, Richmond: The National Archives: 13. 1881.
  7. ↑ Gíslason, Kári; Bennett, Lisa (2024-03-01). "Creative practice as research in Old Norse-Icelandic studies: Ancillary characters as storytellers". postmedieval. 15 (1): 167–191. doi:10.1057/s41280-023-00285-z. ISSN 2040-5979.
  8. ↑ Wawn, Andrew (2000). The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in Nineteenth-century Britain. Boydell & Brewer Ltd. pp. 359–61. ISBN 978-0-85991-644-8.
  9. ↑ Johnson, Skuli (1950). The Laxdaela Saga. p. 10.
  10. ↑ Wawn, Andrew (1992). "The Spirit of 1892: Sagas, Saga-steads and Victorian Philology" (PDF). Saga-Book of the Viking Society. 23: 222–249.